The WTA (Women’s Tennis Association) this week announced the launch of an international tender process to find a new city to host the prestigious Year-End WTA Championships from 2014 and beyond.
Initially set up to support and raise the profile of women’s tennis to the world, and showcase the talents and abilities of the best players, the WTA has already been successful having held the event in a number of world class cities such as New York, Munich, Madrid and Los Angeles. Now that the event has become “recognised as one of a handful of truly blue chip international events on the world sporting calendar” organisers at the WTA feel the time is right to find a dedicated host city to really launch women’s tennis onto the world’s stage.
Stacey Allastar, Chairman & CEO of the WTA, recently explained this pioneering decision to find an international host city for arguably one of the greatest events in the women’s tennis calendar: “ Based on the significant demand by numerous cities around the world to invest in women’s tennis and host our year-end WTA Championships, we decided to launch an international bidding process to select a host city for 2014 and beyond….We are confident that through this process we will be able to identify the right city to become the next partner for the world’s premier sporting event for women.”
As well as attracting the biggest names in women’s tennis to its event, the WTA has also managed to build up a substantial portfolio of high-profile sponsors. The 2011 championships held in the temporary host city of Istanbul (where the event will remain until 2013) was sponsored by BNP Paribas, Rolex, Turkish Airlines and Sony Experia. The 2011 championships was the most successful to date with over 400 hours of live coverage broadcasted to 164 countries throughout the world.
Any city considering become the international host for the event will benefit not just from the increased revenue that is normally associated with hosting sporting events, but also from massive international exposure. There’s also the fact that this event is held in high regard by the best women’s tennis players, with Maria Sharapova recently commenting that “a trip to the WTA Championships, and the right to battle for such a prestigious title and possibly the World No. 1 ranking, is the goal of every single player.”
A highlight in the women’s professional tennis calendar, the year-end event reaches a global audience throughout 164 countries and in its 40-year history has been hosted in handful of world cities. Featuring the very best 8 singles players, and top 4 doubles teams, the event gives competitors a coveted title and a share of multi-million-dollar prize money. Previous winners of the event include some of the greatest names in the history of the sport, and include the Williams sisters – Serena and Venus, Maris Sharapova, Martina Navratilova and Steffi Graf. The Sports Consultancy will be managing the bid process for the Championships, and any parties interested in submitting a bid application should contact them at thesportsconsultancy@wtatennis.com
To see all our predictions for upcoming matches, based on our machine learning model analysing results since 1960, see our tennis predictions page here.
