Money trumps tradition in professional sports, at least where the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) is concerned. That was the takeaway from the recent report by Spanish-language tennis journalist Iván Aguilar that the ATP 500 Series event in Acapulco (Abierto Mexicano Telcel) will go away in 2028 to make way for a new Masters 1000 Series event in Saudi Arabia.
Acapulco has been a mainstay on the ATP Tour since 2001, hosting the most consequential tennis tournament in Mexico and a marquee event in Latin America. The long-running competition has always drawn top-tier talent. Legendary Spanish player Rafael Nadal, for example, was a four-time champion at the Mexican Open in Acapulco. So its loss to the tour, if confirmed by the ATP, will be deeply felt.
🚨🚨🚨ACAPULCO Y LOS CABOS FUERA DEL CALENDARIO ATP🚨🚨🚨
¡Mexico se quedará sin torneos ATP para 2028! Los árabes han comprado la licencia del Abierto Mexicano de Tenis.
El Abierto de Los Cabos pasará a ser un Challenger 175 para jugarse en el primer trimestre del 2028 pic.twitter.com/TN8JLRAAPx
— Iván Aguilar (@ivabianconero) September 2, 2026
Los Cabos will also be affected by the schedule changes, Aguilar noted, as the Los Cabos Tennis Open (Mifel Tennis Open by Telcel Oppo, in sponsor-speak), which recently celebrated its 10th anniversary, will be downgraded from an ATP 250 Series event to a Challenger 175 tournament in 2028, with a shift in its calendar placement also in the works.
This news, combined with recent announcements by the Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) Tour, which is in the process of a major reworking of its own schedule, ensures that two of the three biggest annual sporting events in Los Cabos — Bisbee’s Black and Blue, the world’s biggest fishing tournament, is the other — will undergo significant changes in coming years.
The Saudi money driving ATP changes
The ATP’s calendar shakeup is being driven by Saudi Arabia’s US $900 billion Public Investment Fund (PIF), and by its dedicated sports arm, SURJ Sports Investment. According to The New York Times’ sports arm, The Athletic, SURJ has spent hundreds of millions of dollars buying back tournament licenses to clear a space on the calendar for a 10th Masters 1000 tournament, a 56-player draw likely to take place in Riyadh beginning in February 2028 with an estimated US $6 million prize pool. This is part of a massive overall investment by Saudi Arabia in the ATP Tour.
Among the licenses SURJ purchased to retire or relocate as part of the ATP’s “calendar optimization” program are those from the Chengdu Open, Hong Kong Open, Moselle Open, and the dormant Kremlin Cup. The Athletic reported in March that negotiations were also ongoing to acquire the licenses of tournaments in Acapulco and Buenos Aires. Aguilar’s subsequent reporting suggests the negotiations to acquire the license for the Mexican Open in Acapulco are complete.
Changes to the tennis tournament in Los Cabos
The loss of the Mexican Open and the demotion of the Los Cabos Tennis Open from an ATP-sponsored event to a second-tier Challenger 175 tournament amounts to a gutting of ATP events in Mexico. No top-tier ATP-sponsored events are expected to remain in the country by 2028. Los Cabos keeps its professional tournament, albeit with weaker fields — top-10 players have regularly appeared at the event during its decade-long history, but will likely become a thing of the past — and a fraction of the prize money.
The tournament will also move from its traditional late July calendar slot to sometime during the first few months of 2028. The 2027 editions of the Mexican Open and Los Cabos Tennis Open, meanwhile, have been confirmed, so there is at least one more opportunity for spectators to enjoy each of these events in their current form.
How the PGA’s new schedule affects Los Cabos
Just like in professional tennis, the other major North American individual sport, golf, is looking at major changes as it prepares to make its most significant structural overhaul in decades. Beginning in 2028, the PGA Tour will split into two tiers: a Championship Series and a Challenger Series. As a consequence of this update, the FedExCup Fall Series, of which the World Wide Technology Championship (WWTC) at Tiger Woods’ El Cardonal course at Diamante in Cabo San Lucas has been a part, will no longer exist.
Saudi investment has also played a role in the history of this tournament. For its first 16 editions, the WWTC was held at the Greg Norman-designed El Camaleón Mayakoba Golf Course on the Riviera Maya. However, when Norman became CEO of the Saudi Arabia-backed LIV Golf Tour, the PGA moved the tournament to Los Cabos in 2023. Diamante, the upscale resort and residential community that is home to several Tiger Woods-designed courses, became its new site, with the Woods-designed The Legacy Club talked about as the future location of the WWTC after its opening in 2027.
An uncertain future
But that future is now up in the air following the PGA Tour’s calendar shakeup. The WWTC, notably, only has a contract with the PGA Tour through 2027. Nor does it necessarily fit neatly into either of the new series tracks premiering in 2028. Although the WWTC has drawn top tour pros to compete for its distinctive El Arco-inspired trophy — Ben Griffin was in the world’s top 10 when he won the tournament last year — FedExCup Fall events are not high-profile enough to be slotted into the new Championship Series.
The Challenger Series is a possible landing spot — despite the international locale — and the Tiger Woods connection certainly helps, since the calendar restructuring was approved by the Woods-chaired Future Competition Committee.
But uncertainty remains … both for the WWTC and the only other PGA-sponsored event in Mexico, the VidantaWorld Mexico Open in Nuevo Nayarit. This year, the two are back-to-back on the schedule, with the VidantaWorld Mexico Open slated for Oct. 29 to Nov. 1, and the WWTC for Nov. 5 to 8.
Chris Sands is a writer and editor for Mexico News Daily, and the former Cabo San Lucas local expert for the USA Today travel website 10 Best and writer of Fodor’s Los Cabos travel guidebook. He has also contributed to numerous other websites and publications, including The San Diego Union-Tribune, Marriott Bonvoy Traveler, Forbes Travel Guide, Porthole Cruise and Travel, and Cabo Living.
