The WTA Tour has hired Valerie Camillo, a veteran of the top U.S. sports leagues, as its new chair. Camillo will replace Steve Simon, who led the WTA Tour for the past decade and was best known for leading a year-and-a-half boycott of its business in China, over its government’s failure to publicly investigate tennis player Peng Shuai’s allegations of sexual assault against a top official.
Simon ultimately ended the boycott of China in spring 2023, which led to it pulling a 10-year deal to host the WTA Tour Finals, plunging the event into turmoil.
Camillo, who worked on the NBA’s in-house consulting unit before holding executive roles with MLB’s Washington Nationals and NHL’s Philadelphia Flyers, comes to tennis at a time of unprecedented revenues, worldwide popularity — and seemingly endless infighting.
The sport is undergoing one of its once-in-a-generation periods of self-examination and turmoil, with the ATP and WTA Tours and the Grand Slams battling for supremacy with players in a state of near-rebellion over the length and demands of the schedule, and how tennis divides up its riches.
The Professional Tennis Players Association (PTPA) has filed antitrust actions against the tours and the Grand Slams in both the U.S. and Europe. There are ongoing talks about merging the ATP and WTA’s commercial operations. The WTA will soon have to decide whether it wants to keep its biggest event, the season-ending Tour Finals, in Saudi Arabia, which is heavily criticized for its treatment of women. Its major media contracts will have to be renegotiated in the coming years.
“The best time to be getting involved, when there’s a moment happening and incredible assets and a legacy to leverage to achieve it,” Camillo said during an interview Monday.
“Not only is tennis having a moment, but broader sports is having a moment. Just the amount of investment that’s coming in and the sophistication I think is ever-increasing. You can’t say enough about what’s happening in women’s sports with measurable differences in outcomes, from when I joined the NBA back in 2010. It’s just a totally different ballgame now.”
Camillo played softball, basketball and lacrosse growing up, but didn’t take up tennis until about a decade ago, when she was 40. She then “went down the rabbit hole,” she said, by getting involved in U.S. Tennis Assocation and country-club leagues.
“Now I have this opportunity to marry my passion and my career and my broad career experience in sports and entertainment,” she said.
Camillo has been trying to build relationships with the tour’s members, both past and present, during the interview process.
In a statement, Billie Jean King, one of the founders of the WTA Tour, called Camillo’s appointment “a strong move for the organization.”
“I’ve known Valerie for years,” King said. “She is a winner, and brings a passion for tennis, a wealth of knowledge of sports business and a fresh perspective for our future.”
Camillo said that she plans to review the WTA Tour’s calendar and mandatory event rules, which is the subject of so much player angst. All 10 of its premier events outside the Grand Slams, the WTA 1000s, are mandatory. Players of sufficient ranking must also play six WTA 500 events. At news conferences during the China Open in Beijing, world No. 2 Iga Świątek called the season “too long and too intense,” while world No. 3 Coco Gauff described keeping up with the 500-level quota — for which players are penalized if they miss it — as “impossible.”
In response to Świątek, a spokesperson said that “athlete welfare is a top priority,” and pointed to the prize-money increases that have come with the increase in mandatory events since 2024, prior to which just four had that status.
Camillo, who also emphasized her need to increase revenues and prize money, and to engage with media and sponsorship partners, said that she “wanted something that had meaty strategic challenges, big strategic decisions that needed to be tackled.
“Tennis is at a moment for that. Whether it be around the discussion around commercial merger with the ATP, the future of the finals after 2026, the circuit structure … These decisions are going to define the sport’s next era.”
Camillo said she believes the WTA Tour can approach those decisions from a position of strength. At a time when other sports, such as basketball and soccer, are still in the infancy of capturing the commercial potential and fan appeal of women’s sports, the WTA Tour has a 50-year head start. It has the highest-paid and most recognized athletes who participate alongside and with men at some of the highest-profile sports events in the world.
“Whether it’s the NBA or the NHL or MLB, tennis is at a place that they can only dream about going,” Camillo said. “Our challenge is about taking these incredible assets, this legacy, this first-mover advantage, if you will, to unlock a new level of commercial growth.”
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Sports Business, Tennis, Women’s Tennis
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