The Laver Cup: How Roger Federer's Experiment Became A $50 Million Global Sports Property
What started as Roger Federer’s tribute to Rod Laver is now selling out arenas, drawing luxury sponsors, and forcing cities worldwide to compete for hosting rights.
This weekend, more than 80,000 fans will fill the Chase Center in San Francisco — the $1.4 billion state-of-the-art arena that serves as home to the Golden State Warriors.
These fans will travel to the Bay Area from all over the world, including all 50 states and dozens of countries. Brands such as Rolex, Mercedes-Benz, UBS, Alipay, Uniqlo, and Moët & Chandon will collectively invest millions of dollars in marketing their businesses. But these fans aren’t there to see Stephen Curry shoot threes; they are coming to watch tennis.
In just a few short years, the Laver Cup has evolved from an ambitious vision into one of the most financially successful events in tennis. Created by Roger Federer and Tony Godsick in 2017, the international tennis competition is expected to generate over $50 million in revenue over three days from ticket sales, sponsorships, and media rights.
The format of the tournament is simple: The Laver Cup is a three-day competition featuring six top men’s players from Europe competing against six top men’s players from the rest of the world. Matches on Friday are worth 1 point, Saturday’s matches are worth 2 points, and Sunday’s are worth 3 points. The first team to reach 13 points wins. It’s like the Ryder Cup, but each player on the winning team receives $250,000.
The top three ATP-ranked players from each region earn automatic invitations to play on the Monday after Roland-Garros. The captains — Yannick Noah for Team Europe and Andre Agassi for Team World — then invite three players as “Captain’s Picks.” As a result, the Laver Cup is the only place where rivals compete as teammates and cheer one another on from the sidelines. This year’s tournament features six of the world’s top twelve players, including Carlos Alcaraz (No. 1), Alexander Zverev (No. 3), Taylor Fritz (No. 5), Alex de Minaur (No. 8), Holger Rune (No. 11), and Casper Ruud (No. 12).
Players love the format because it offers them the unique camaraderie of an individual sport becoming a team event — and fans have responded as well. It doesn’t matter if the Laver Cup is in Prague, Chicago, Geneva, London, or San Francisco; every single session is sold out, with fans spending hours before and after matches in the fan zone.
“[I’ve] talked to many of the players and they say [the Laver Cup] is one of the most fun events to play in, a great event,” Denmark’s Holger Rune said earlier this week. “[For] many of them, it’s their favorite event — even more than the Grand Slams."
Anyone who works in sports knows that creating a new event is nearly impossible. Between the most prominent leagues (NFL, NBA, MLB) and emerging properties (NWSL, PLL, TGL), there is just too much to compete with these days. Fans must pick and choose which events to attend based on their budgets, and there are only a limited number of sponsorships and media rights available. But that’s what makes the Laver Cup so special. The Laver Cup isn’t just surviving; it’s become a financial powerhouse.
The Laver Cup initially benefited from its relationship with Roger Federer. The 20-time Grand Slam winner wanted to honor legendary Australian tennis player Rod Laver and his contemporaries by showcasing the game’s biggest stars in a whole new way. Federer made calls to some of his longest-standing sponsors (Rolex, UBS, Mercedes-Benz) to help get the event off the ground. But while many people believed the Laver Cup would falter when Federer retired in 2022, the opposite has happened.
Tickets for this year’s tournament have sold out. That means more than 80,000 people will attend the tournament over the course of three days. Some chose cheaper single-day tickets priced at $44, while others will entertain clients courtside in the Rocket Lounge for $30,000. In total, the Laver Cup 2025 is expected to generate more than $20 million in revenue from ticket sales alone, surpassing the tournament’s previous ticket sales record, which was set during Federer’s final tournament in 2022 in London.
However, perhaps the most impressive aspect of the tournament is that the Laver Cup not only maintained its existing sponsorship portfolio but has also expanded it.
Rolex was the tournament’s first-ever sponsor, but the luxury watch company has renewed its founding partnership every year since and recently signed a long-term sponsorship deal. The Laver Cup has also signed extensions with Mercedes-Benz and UBS, while adding new partners like Alipay+, Perplexity, Flexjet, and Boss. As a result, more than 50% of commercial revenue now comes from brands that don’t sponsor Federer. That allows the Laver Cup to stand on its own as a trusted, premium event.
The Laver Cup’s business model is so successful because the event embodies everything that Roger Federer stands for. Competitiveness is guaranteed because the tournament’s status as an official ATP Tour event means that matches count towards a player’s record, and the point system is intelligently designed so that the winner is never determined before Sunday. Global broadcasting deals provide brands with reach that surpasses many ATP events, and the Laver Cup’s unique black court and digital walls have created an environment that is both high-class and instantly recognizable.
In fact, the Laver Cup has become so successful that cities all around the world are now submitting bids to host the event. Iconic locations like Prague, Chicago, Geneva, Boston, London, and Berlin have already hosted the tournament, with San Francisco hosting this year and London set to host again next year. The bidding process has become increasingly competitive because economic studies suggest that the average tournament generates a $58.5 million economic boost to the region, with some events bringing in $89 million while also creating over 450 jobs during the week of the event.
Many sports fans have begun to dismiss economic studies as irrelevant. Everyone who reads this newsletter knows that I am often just as skeptical of these numbers as you are. However, the Laver Cup is different because it’s one of the few events where fans travel thousands of miles to attend. This is an essential distinction because net-new tax revenue is really what matters. If someone from the host city attends the event, that’s one less dollar out of their budget that they might spend at a local shop or restaurant. But with thousands of people traveling into the area from out of state or another country, all of the money they spend becomes net-new tax revenue for the city.
The Laver Cup has proven that even in today’s saturated sports landscape, there’s still room for new traditions — if they’re executed flawlessly. By blending Federer’s brand of elegance with smart economics, global reach, and a one-of-a-kind format, the Laver Cup has quickly gone from an experiment to a cornerstone of the tennis calendar.
And the tournament’s trajectory is only pointing up. With consecutive sellouts across continents, a sponsorship roster stacked with blue-chip brands, and cities fighting for hosting rights, the Laver Cup is no longer just Federer’s vision. It’s become a sustainable business with an increasingly bright future. In many ways, the Laver Cup has also become the blueprint for how to build the next great global sports property.
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