Saudis target tennis players – Kommersant

The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) said it has not yet made a decision on the location of the final tournament of the 2024 season. The announcement comes amid reports that Saudi Arabia will receive the right to host one of the key competitions on the calendar. This is not the first time for the WTA to postpone a decision on the location of the final championship. This year it took place in Cancun, Mexico, but two months before the start of the championship the tennis players did not know where they would go. Information that the WTA is negotiating to move the final tournament to Saudi Arabia was spread by many Western publications. Thus, the BBC claims that negotiations on a multi-year contract have entered the final stage. “We are still in the process of negotiations and have not made any decisions,” the WTA press service told Reuters.

Talk about moving the final WTA tournament to Saudi Arabia did not appear out of nowhere. The kingdom’s authorities have set a course to transform the country into one of the sports centers of the world. Let us remind you that the 2034 FIFA World Cup will be held in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi football league is actively developing – Saudi teams spent more than $800 million on the purchase of stars in the summer of 2023 alone, showing the third highest result in the world. Saudi Arabia has been hosting the world’s largest rally raid, the Dakar, for several years now; since 2021, the country has been hosting a stage of the Formula 1 championship. Saudi structures are ready to invest up to $5 billion in the Indian Professional League (IPL is the largest cricket league in the world). In tennis, Saudi Arabia has already hosted the men’s Next Generation ATP Finals tournament this year (featuring eight top players under the age of 21), and is also in talks to host one of the Masters 1000 tournaments in the country.

Alexander Petrov