Ben Shelton Is Leaving On for New Balance — and Nobody Official Will Say the Number

Ben Shelton is leaving On for New Balance. Jessica Schiffer of Hard Court — the reporter who has owned this story at every step — reported Monday that the deal is done: the new contract starts in January, carries substantial ranking bonuses, and puts a signature shoe on the table. On held the right to match any outside offer. It chose not to.

UPDATE — Monday, November 9, 2026: This story now carries the figures reported during the fall bidding — as high as $10 million a year — labeled plainly as the unconfirmed reports they are. The signed contract’s value has not been reported, and Hard Court’s full terms remain paywalled.

The one thing nobody official will print is the number. Shelton’s On deal reportedly paid up to $2 million a year, per talkSPORT’s account of Schiffer’s earlier reporting. The reported price of the new deal ran far higher while the bidding was live: reports this fall put it as high as $10 million a year, and College Sports Network reported Shelton could land a New Balance deal worth $15 million. None of those figures is confirmed — they are the reported numbers from the chase, not the contract. The signed deal’s actual value has not been reported, and the full terms sit inside Schiffer’s paywalled Hard Court piece, direct comment from On included. What the structure says on its own is plenty: heavy ranking bonuses and a signature shoe are how a brand pays when it believes the titles are coming.

None of it comes as a shock if you followed Schiffer’s earlier reporting. Months ago, Hard Court reported that Shelton’s team was disappointed with On’s marketing and its product, and had quietly taken him to market while his contract ran toward its end-of-year expiration. On signed him in March 2023, when he was a 20-year-old ranked outside the top 40, and made him the first active male tennis player in the brand’s history. He outgrew the deal almost immediately. This fall he reached his first Grand Slam final at the US Open — beating defending champion Carlos Alcaraz along the way in the latest finish in the tournament’s history — and this past weekend he played the Paris Masters final, days before the ATP Finals in Turin. Brands were not bidding on potential anymore. They were bidding on the face of American men’s tennis.

For New Balance, it is also a reunion. Shelton wore New Balance before he ever wore On, back when he was an unproven college champion out of Florida. He returns as a top-five player joining a tennis roster built around Coco Gauff — signed at 14, now carrying her own signature line — and Tommy Paul, the man Shelton beat in the Paris quarterfinals last week. Gauff got her signature shoe. Shelton getting one of his own is the part of this deal with real risk in it: signature tennis shoes are rare, expensive to build, and only pay off if the player keeps winning and keeps selling. Schiffer frames it plainly as a gamble. It is also exactly the bet Shelton wanted a brand to make on him.

On, meanwhile, keeps Iga Swiatek and the Federer halo, and loses the loudest young personality in the men’s game at the moment his price peaked. That was the choice in front of them: match whatever New Balance put on the table, or let him walk. They let him walk.

Shelton finishes his season in On kit — Turin is still in front of him — and starts the new one in January in New Balance, when the tour swings through Australia. The phone-booth celebration is getting a new logo. This time, it comes with his name on the shoe.