Saudi Arabia, a growing force in golf, seeks to host women’s tennis
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WITH the golf world already divided over Saudi Arabia’s emergence as a powerful force in the game, another major sport is contending with whether to do business with the kingdom.
This time it’s women’s tennis, which pulled out of China last year over concerns for the welfare of a player who accused a Chinese vice-premier of sexual assault and later disappeared from sight.
Saudi Arabia has approached the Women’s Tennis Association about hosting an event, possibly the Tour Finals, but the WTA has not entertained the prospect of a tournament there in any formal fashion.
Steve Simon, chief executive of the WTA, declined to be interviewed for this article, but a spokesperson, Amy Binder, confirmed Saudi Arabia’s interest, saying in a statement, “As a global organisation, we are appreciative of inquiries received from anywhere in the world and we look seriously at what each opportunity may bring.”
In recent weeks, professional golf has been upended by the start of the LIV Golf Invitational series, which is bankrolled by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund and is paying US$4 million prizes to tournament winners, along with participation fees reportedly as high as US$200 million. Players like Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson who have left the PGA Tour and joined LIV Golf have been accused by other players of helping the kingdom to “sportswash” its human rights abuses, among them the 2018 government-sponsored killing of Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi.
Saudi Arabia’s interest in tennis was first reported by The Telegraph in Britain.
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The kingdom in recent years has invested heavily in sports and cultural events as part of a broader effort to project a new image around the world. The women’s tennis tour would be likely to face questions if it staged events in Saudi Arabia, where women’s rights have been curtailed and women gained the right to drive only in 2018. (Saudi Arabia has staged professional women’s golf events, hosting official Ladies European Tour stops each of the last 3 years.)
When veteran Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai disappeared last year, Simon demanded a full investigation of her allegations. Peng eventually reappeared, but when Chinese authorities did not allow Peng to meet independently with Simon and the WTA, Simon suspended all of the tour’s business in China, including its 10-year deal to hold the Tour Finals in Shenzen.
It was a significant financial blow to the WTA. China had paid a record US$14 million in prize money in 2019, the first year of the agreement. That was double the amount of prize money from 2018, when the WTA Finals finished its 5-year run in Singapore. The WTA relocated the finals last year to Guadalajara, Mexico, which offered only US$5 million in prize money and a drastically reduced payment for the right to host the event.
WTA leaders have yet to announce the WTA Finals host city for 2022, and it remains a challenge, with the longer-term Shenzhen deal still in place, to find candidates interested in bidding for the Finals for just 1 year.
Saudi Arabia, with its appetite for international sport and huge financial resources, fits the profile of a potential bidder.
“They are interested in women’s sports, and they are interested in big events, so for sure,” said Austrian businessman and tennis tournament promoter Peter-Michael Reichel.
The WTA has held events in Arab countries, including Qatar and Dubai, for years. But Saudi Arabia has yet to secure an official tour event in men’s or women’s tennis despite making increasingly serious offers.
Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic were set to play an exhibition there in December 2018 but were put under pressure to cancel it after the assassination of Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October of that year. The exhibition match was eventually called off with Nadal citing an ankle injury.
A year later, an 8-man tennis exhibition was played in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital, in December 2019 ahead of the start of the regular men’s tennis season. The Diriyah Tennis Cup featured leading ATP players Daniil Medvedev of Russia, Stan Wawrinka of Switzerland and John Isner of the United States and was played in a temporary 15,000-seat stadium. Prince Abdul Aziz bin Turki al-Faisal, chair of the Saudi General Sports Authority, called hosting the event “another watershed moment for the kingdom” and hit the ceremonial first serve. NYTIMES
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