Riyadh will host the 6 Kings Slam, a new tournament featuring six men’s tennis stars

In October, Riyadh will host the 6 Kings Slam, an exhibition tournament in which six men’s tennis stars of different generations are planning to compete, including the world number one, Serbian Novak Djokovic and Russian Daniil Medvedev. Its feature will be not only the prize fund, which is unique for such a number of tennis players and will amount to more than $13 million, but also the timing. The fact is that, according to the existing rules of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), players are actually prohibited from participating in such competitions during the season.

The fact that in October a unique exhibition tournament with the loud name 6 Kings Slam will be held in Riyadh, in which six men’s tennis stars of different generations will participate, reported all world news agencies. This is no accident. The list of athletes who plan to compete in this competition is truly impressive.

It included 24-time Grand Slam winner Serb Novak Djokovic and their 22-time champion Spaniard Rafael Nadal, former world No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz, who has two major titles to his name, 2021 US Open champion Russian Daniil Medvedev, the newly crowned Australian Open winner, Italian Jannik Sinner and Dane Holger Rune, are number seven in the world rankings and one of the most popular young tennis players, although they do not yet have as significant achievements as their rivals.

The prize pool for 6 Kings Slam will be more than $13 million, with each participant guaranteed a minimum of $1.5 million, and the winner will receive $6 million.

This is noticeably more than the $4.4 million that Australian Ashleigh Barty earned in 2019 in Shenzhen at the final tournament of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), who then set a record for tennis competitions. However, 6 Kings Slam has another feature, which was noticed by the British publication The Telegraph. It lies in the timing of the competition.

Initially it was supposed to take place in February. But after Rafael Nadal, who was recently announced as an unofficial representative of the Saudi Arabian Tennis Federation, was injured in January, before the start of the Australian Open, the tournament was postponed to the fall following an emergency meeting between the organizers of the 6 Kings Slam and the athletes’ agents.

The 6 Kings Slam will take place during the week of October 14-20, when between the Masters 1000 championship in Shanghai and two 500 tournaments in Vienna and Basel, three smaller 250 events are scheduled on the ATP calendar in Almaty, Stockholm and Antwerp.

An important nuance is that according to ATP rules, the participation of players in exhibition tournaments during the season is actually prohibited.

More precisely, it is regulated by a special clause of the rules: an athlete must not take part in any competitions that are not included in the ATP Tour if they last “three days in a row or more.” Otherwise, he loses his so-called platinum status and is not allowed to participate in the bonus prize pool, which is divided among tennis players at the end of the season and last year amounted to about $10 million.

It is significant that this clause was introduced by the ATP only a few weeks ago – clearly with the aim of limiting the possibility of elite athletes participating in tournaments like the 6 Kings Slam. By the way, from a legal point of view, such restrictions in tennis are always problematic, since each player taking part in ATP or WTA competitions is not an employee, but an individual trader.

However, according to The Telegraph, the organizers of the competition in Riyadh will try to circumvent the new clause of the regulations with the help of a special schedule. They will structure it in such a way that matches do not take place more than two days in a row. In this case, each athlete will receive one or even two days off during the week. Considering that only six people will play in 6 Kings Slam, this option is quite realistic.

Be that as it may, the announcement of the 6 Kings Slam should be considered the next step in the expansion of Saudi Arabia in professional tennis.

As Kommersant already reported, tennis is on the verge of serious changes, processes similar to those that have affected golf in the last two years are underway. As you know, there is a LIV Golf competition system supported by Saudi Arabia, outbid many of the top athletes on the PGA Tour. This has led to a costly legal battle and a potential merger of the two tours, the details of which are still being worked out.

In tennis, however, the situation looks manageable so far. Last November, the final youth ATP tournament, the Next Generation ATP Finals, was held for the first time in Jeddah, the prize pool of which, after moving from Milan, immediately increased by about a third – from $1.4 million to $2 million.

For several months now there has been talk about moving the final WTA tournament to this country, which last year was held in Mexico with great organizational problems. According to The Telegraph, a three-year agreement on this matter may be signed in the near future, despite the opposition represented by several stars of past years, including Americans Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert, who disagree with this option for ideological reasons.

Let us also recall that in November last year it became known that a project for a certain “premium tour” was being developed, which would be a partnership between four Grand Slam championships and at least ten other major tournaments. This work is being carried out with the participation of the Saudi Arabian public investment fund Public Investment Fund (PIF) with assets of about $700 billion. New information on this matter may appear in March, during the first ATP Masters 1000 tournament of the season in Indian Wells. In the meantime, as The Telegraph reports, the ATP leadership is negotiating with PIF about branding its four tournaments and selling television rights to cover Masters 1000 competitions.

Evgeniy Fedyakov