Prepared for Paul Kaplan · The Rips · Tampa Bay · September 2026
The team lives at the academy.
A professional INTENNSE team based at the Mouratoglou Academy just outside Tampa: the pros train where the juniors do, the juniors watch the players they could become, and a summer season fills a stadium court that is otherwise between tournaments.
A vision for Tampa Bay · Eight sections, about six minutes
In the stands in Atlanta, watching his sister play · Season 2
■ Tampa Bay
A city that knows how to back a team.
Two Stanley Cups in back-to-back seasons, a Super Bowl won in its own stadium, and a women’s soccer club that won its league in its first year under local owners. Tampa Bay builds teams. What it hasn’t had is a professional tennis team to call its own through a season.
Tampa–St. Petersburg is Florida’s largest, 2025–26.
Tampa–St. Petersburg–Clearwater, 2025 Census estimate.
The Gulf Coast Championships at the Tampa Bay Hotel.
A tennis region long before a tennis team
Tampa Bay has been a tennis place for more than a century — from the Gulf Coast Championships of the 1890s to the professional events of the 1970s and 80s, and the academy tradition at Saddlebrook in Wesley Chapel, where Harry Hopman’s program trained a generation of champions. Florida has more core tennis players than any section in the country.
What it hasn’t had is a team of its own to follow through a season. That is the part INTENNSE adds.
■ The Rips
A water team for a water city.
The Rips’ crest is a breaking wave. For two seasons the team has lived in metro Atlanta, like every INTENNSE team; by 2028 each moves to a home market of its own. The Rips’ could be Tampa Bay.
The team today
Aliona Bolsova, a former French Open fourth-rounder who played at Florida Atlantic, was the league’s 2026 Women’s MVP with its highest scoring average. Isaac Nortey reached the Florida state final for Lakeland High School. The Rips’ biggest night of the season was a 187–143 win over a team that went on to the semifinals.
The team’s Pulse Partner is Sloane Stephens, the 2017 US Open champion — born in Florida.
■ The home court
A stadium court, a boarding school and ninety future professionals.
Mouratoglou Academy Zephyrhills opened as the network’s first full academy in the United States: clay and hard courts under lights, a stadium court that seats up to 3,000, and boarding for ninety student-athletes.
“Florida is one of the world’s great epicenters for tennis.”
Patrick Mouratoglou · on opening the academy · November 2024
What a team at the academy looks like
Match nights on the stadium court. The academy’s own calendar is built around spring and autumn events; an eight-week summer season fills the months in between with a professional team and a home crowd.
Professionals next door to the juniors. Every INTENNSE team trains at a home club alongside its members. Here that means the academy’s boarders practise beside the players they are trying to become — and see, every week, that there is a paid professional place at the end of the road.
More than tennis. The campus already has padel, pickleball and beach-tennis courts, which makes a match night a whole-family evening.
■ The off-season
Somewhere to train when the season ends.
An INTENNSE season is eight weeks. The other forty-four are where players are made or lost — and most professionals outside the top of the game have nowhere to spend them. A Mouratoglou network could be their home base.
How the off-season base would work
Players are paid a $40,000 base to compete in the season, with total earnings of up to $70,000. Between seasons, a player could base at the Mouratoglou site nearest home — coaching, fitness and courts year round — and return to the Rips match-fit. The league gets players who arrive better every year; the academies get working professionals on court with their students.
Patrick Mouratoglou has said the plan is to open five to ten new centers a year across the country. Every one of them could be another place an INTENNSE professional calls home between seasons.
■ The pathway
From the academy to a drafted place.
The academy already takes players from junior tennis to college. INTENNSE adds the step after it: a professional team, in the same building.
How the steps connect
The Challenge Series is an open draw whose winners are drafted onto a Challenge Team, coached by a guest professional, and earn an exhibition against a professional roster. Staged at the academy, it gives every boarder and every local junior a direct route onto a professional court.
This year’s draft drew 373 applicants, 144 of them women — up 748% on the year before. Every team fields three women and three men, so every place the Rips create is as open to the academy’s girls as to its boys.
Junior
Academy programs, camps and clinics in the team format.
School
Tennis & School on campus, and the Challenge Series.
College
The academy’s placement route, and a team to play for.
The Rips
A drafted professional place, on the home stadium court.
■ How it plays
A season that already runs.
Ten teams, eight weeks, fifty-one matches. Each match is time-boxed, singles and doubles count equally toward one team score, and the women’s results decide the tie as much as the men’s.
The Rules of INTENNSE, explained · 2:04
Nearly 8,000 fans through a 500-seat arena.
Record live concurrents across the final series.
Two broadcast, two RSNs, seven FAST, three streaming — 60% of watch time on TV.
Up 748% on the year before.
■ The path to owning it
A ten-year charter for Tampa Bay.
Owners hold an exclusive Team Charter: MLS-style, geographically bound economic rights, not a traditional franchise. Ten years, renewing in five-year terms.
The league keeps
- Game
- Format, rules, schedule, officiating
- Brand
- League marks and national sponsorship
- Rights
- Media and data rights
The owner holds
- Team
- Operations and team marks in the territory
- Revenue
- Local sponsorship, ticketing, hospitality, activations
- Share
- Team merchandise, and a share of pooled league revenue
2026–27
The league operates the team while the academy partnership and Tampa Bay events build its audience.
2028
The Rips move home. The owner appoints a GM, takes ticketing, hospitality and venue, and inherits a community playbook proven over three years.
2029 on
Scale — and a share of the fees from every charter the league sells after the initial offering.
■ What we’d build together
A team, an academy and a pathway, on one campus.
No other professional team in tennis would train, play and develop its next players in the same place. Tampa Bay could have the first.
The Rips at the academy
Home matches on the stadium court and a year-round base for the team.
The off-season network
Mouratoglou sites as training homes for INTENNSE professionals between seasons.
The Challenge Series
An open draw at the academy, with a professional place at the end of it.
The charter
Terms, territory and the path from league-operated to owner-operated, walked through in full.
