Throughout the season, the stories of the ATP 250-level events – the lifeblood of the Tour – having all sorts of financial and player commitment issues have abounded.
The latest casualty is the Portugal Open, which has been around since 1990 and was a joint event at the lower levels of the game (since 1999) long before that concept suddenly became trendy at the top levels.
It means that one of the most picturesque tennis courts on the pro scene, the Centralito, will be relegated to the history books. Which is only a small part of the shame of it.
There are two elements to this. Let’s look at the women’s side first.
The women’s portion of the Portugal Open (an International-level event) was canned after this year, although there’s no mention of it on the WTA Tour’s tournament page.
There also is no mention of the WTA event in Nürnberg, Germany in 2015 (that was the scene of Canadian Genie Bouchard’s maiden WTA Tour title; she also played the Portugal event). We’re told that, at this time a year ago, it also wasn’t on the docket, and it ended up being held. There is no indication so far that it won’t return – and the fact that there are two WTA board members involved with it would seem to make it a formality. We’re told there are a couple of possibilities for the second “TBD” – one of them being Prague.
The spring clay-court calendar, which had been full of places for the women to play in April and May, looks rather barren at the moment.
(I reached out to the WTA Tuesday afternoon for confirmation, or further info on the 2015 spring sked; a spokesperson said things would get finalized after a board meeting in early December).
This was 2014:
This is the schedule for 2015:
From eight non-Premier events, the schedule is down to four confirmed at the moment, lpus the two “to be determined.” One of them, the Katowice Open (which was indoors on clay in its inaugural edition in 2013) was switched to hard court this year.
That’s all well and good for the top-40 types who get straight into Madrid and Rome. But where are the others going to play?
Putting on a top-level pro event isn’t something that just comes together overnight, and these events are five months away.
All the attention has mostly been on what will change during the grass-court season, which will be three weeks before Wimbledon instead of two, and has required events like Stuttgart (long an ATP clay-court event) to undergo a complete makeover.
And we won’t even get into all the empty seats through the Asian swing, the “new frontier” where the WTA is investing heavily in the hope that new and substantial sources of revenue can be added to the Tour’s bottom line.
Now, on to the men …
sunday, @ATPWorldTour CEO ChrisKermode told me no decision had been made; now it’s official: no @PortugalOpen in 2015. My soul is crying…
— Miguel Seabra (@MiguelSeabra) November 18, 2014
Miguel Seabra, a former umpire and a journalist and TV commentator for nearly 25 years, has been involved with the tournament since its inception a quarter-century ago.
The Portugal Open was scheduled for the week beginning April 27, along with two other clay-court 250s: the Garanti Koza Istanbul Open and the BMW Open in Munich. And now, it’s not.
That the Istanbul event, announced in July, was being added to the schedule that week in its inaugural edition was probably an early sign that the Portugal Open was in some trouble – although there was nothing new there.
It suffered from the lack of major sponsors (including that all-important title sponsor), and was said to be in some serious financial difficulty – to the point that we’re told some of the appearance fees to ATP Tour players for this year’s edition are still outstanding.
The ATP required an up-front money guarantee to secure the 2015 edition, and the tournament wasn’t solvent enough to make it happen.
It’s hardly the only 250 event that has been struggling.
After 36 years, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported a few weeks ago that the clay-court event in Düsseldorf (for years a men’s exhibition team event; the last two years a regular ATP Tour draw) also was no more.
Former player Rainer Schuettler and impresario Ion Tiriac, who own the licence for the ATP slot, had been angling to move the tournament to Geneva, Switzerland
Tournament director Dietloff von Arnim told DPA that despite their efforts, they remained unable to secure a title sponsor.
Duesseldorf remained on the ATP Tour’s schedule as of the last updated version, which was October 13.
Tiriac right arm Gerard Tsobanian, with whom he runs the Madrid Masters 1000 event, told 20 Minutes that they hoped to reproduce the Madrid model on a local level and that the area was full of potential in terms of sponsors and VIPs. The Frenchman said they wanted to work with the tournament director at the Geneva Challenger, which would disappear.
Meanwhile, the Swiss Tennis Federation wass strongly opposed to the move, for various reasons, including its own interests in other events.
Federation president Rene Stammbach said the potential organizers are more concerned with “the quest for prestige” than any sort of long-term viability. They thought the market is too small to hold another tournament, along with the one in Gstaad, Basel and the Davis Cup. In 2015, they say, they could have three events within 11 weeks within a 100-kilometre radius.
Stammback also said that the dates – the week before the French Open – make it tough to attract the top 10 players the Swiss tennis are accustomed to, given those two guys who come from that country, adding that the dates because of the Summer Olympics in Rio in 2016 are even worse.
After all that, a new version of the ATP’s 2015 schedule, updated Nov. 19, has the Geneva Open in that slot. The move was confirmed Wednesday.
Also Tuesday, this Tweet from Russian tennis journalist Vladas Lasitskas.
ATP Valencia 500 has asked the ATP Kremlin Cup 250 to change categories and week with each other. Moscow said no. — Vladas Lasitskas (@VladasLasitskas) November 18, 2014
Think about that. The Valencia event – the one with the fabulously architectural arena, wants to downgrade from a 500 to a 250 to lessen the financial obligations.
It’s probably not that surprising. Tournament director Juan Carlos Ferrero said a few weeks ago that the tournament lost a million Euros this year. Their subsidy from the government has dropped from 3.5 million to 1.5 million Euros over the last few years, since it moved to the fall season in 2009 (switching with Madrid, which is now a big clay-court tuneup to the French Open, a joint event and a Masters 1000 for the men).
That’s a drop from about 40 per cent of the tournament’s budget to 10 per cent. And without a title sponsor, that’s a big deficit to make up.
As well this year, Valencia couldn’t afford the guarantees their direct competitor, Basel, can pay and Spanish icon Rafael Nadal has never played. It ended up lucking out this year because of the tight race to qualify for the Masters, with players like Andy Murray and Tomas Berdych signing up at the last minute. But they can’t count on that every year.
A couple of weeks ago, the tournament confirmed that an agreement for the next two years had been worked out with the Valencia government. But it seems, from Lasitskas’s Tweet, that they’re still trying to rein in the expenses.
In addition to the cost of running the events, the 250s also have to deal with the constant bailouts of the top players – who are intrinsic to their quest to balance their budgets and sell the tournament. And it’s a vicious circle; the more they struggle financially, the less they can afford what the marquee players charge to play the 250 events.
Earlier this year, we posted about the problems facing the ATP 250 event in Marseille, France.
And there was also Metz, where tournament director Julien Boutter, a former top-50 player, was furious when Stan Wawrinka pulled out at the 11th hour – not because of a specific injury but because of “fatigue” after a Davis Cup tie. As with all of these lower-level events, a star like Wawrinka is a big part of the promotional push, their faces plastered across posters and the like.
Genie Bouchard was the subject of the same wrath when, after an easily-escapable commitment to the inaugural Hong Kong event this September (a wild card instead of direct entry), she was a last-minute no-go. Organizers there didn’t mince their words.
Metz director Boutter called for things to change, for the ATP to “re-value” the 250s, which he said were the “DNA of tennis”.
“The ATP is a family with two children – the players and the tournaments. And the two kids don’t want the same thing. One of the two gets away with everything and is more spoiled,” Boutter said.
The French events (Metz, Montpellier, Marseille, Nice) can at least count on a big group of highly-ranked French players who, for the most part, are loyal.
Most countries don’t have that option. Just look at what’s happened in the U.S. over the last decades, to the smaller events.
San Jose, and its long history, are history. The Memphis event, which has been around for 40 years, probably only survived into 2015 because the USTA bought it.
They brought in a new tournament director, whose previous experience was with a $100,000 ITF women’s event in Midland, Michigan. There’s an interview with her here. It’s on the tournament site, so it’s not exactly hard-hitting. But two things that will happen is they will drop ticket prices some 15-20 per cent – and add seating. Without big-name players, the first likely won’t make a difference and the second might well be moot.
There were nine Masters 1000 tournaments in 2014. At the 500 level, there were 11. At the 250 level, there were … 40.
As it is, most of the Challengers are struggling financially. The 250 are scuffling and even a 500-level tournament like Valencia is having a hard time.
It’s no exaggeration to say that the problems are creeping up the hierarchy, even if the prize money at Grand Slams has never been greater, and the top players are making more money than ever before.
But if they don’t have enough places to play on their way up the ladder to the big time, that’s a big problem.
The issues are a lot more complex than just what was outlined here. But this post is long enough. 🙂
The ATP 250 tournament directors had their annual meeting 10 days ago; Austria’s Alex Antonisch put this funny pic on Facebook to illustrate their dilemma. I’ve give a tennis racquet to have sat in on that one.
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