Sport Industry Group

WTA launches tender for Championship host- 17 May 2012 00:00:00

The Women’s Tennis Association has officially launched an international tender process to select a host city for its WTA Championships for 2014 and beyond.

The end-of-year event features the top eight singles players and leading four doubles partnerships competing for a share of the multi-million dollar prize pot, in front of a global television audience spanning 164 countries. 

The Championships have previously taken place in New York, Los Angeles, Munich, Madrid and Doha before arriving in Istanbul in 2011 for the first of installment of a three-year run in the Turkish capital.

The 2011 Championships registered the highest attendance in 12 years, and set record broadcast and digital audience milestones. 

The WTA has chosen London-based international sports marketing agency The Sports Consultancy to manage the Championships bid process, which will begin with requests for expression of interest sent to prospective host cities that are required to respond by the end of June.

A final decision on the new host city is expected to be made in March 2013.

Stacey Allaster, chairman and CEO of the WTA, said: ‘The WTA Championships has gone from strength to strength over the past four decades, and is today recognised as one of a handful of truly blue chip international events on the world sporting 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.’

‘It’s a chance for some city somewhere to step up on the world stage. 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.’