One by one, they stop in front of the St Regis Hotel in Riyad.
Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz, Rafael Nadal, Daniil Medvedev and Runa Holger have arrived – only Novak Djokovic has not yet joined the biggest stars of men's tennis in accepting flowers, drinking tea and talking to Turki Alalshikh, chairman of Saudi Arabia's General Entertainment Authority (GEA). .
They are the spectacle and will once again come to the capital of Saudi Arabia. One of the richest exhibitions in tennis history, a $15 million (£11.9 million) bonanza that the kingdom dubbed the 'Six Kings Slam'. The winner will take home $6 million. He earns over $1 million just by being there.
Two weeks later, the WTA Tour would arrive with its season-ending final, another $15 million payout to the top eight singles players of the year and the top women's doubles teams. The ATP Next Gen Finals, an event featuring the top eight men under the age of 21, will be held in December in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia's second-largest city and commercial center.
For the rest of the season, the Gulf nation will act as the heart of the tennis universe, unlikely as that may seem in a country where people barely play the sport and have never hosted major tournaments. After years of pressure, everything looks ready Saudi Arabia's billion-dollar move to become a major force in tennis is taking off — with one major problem.
After months of ongoing negotiations and due diligence between the kingdom and tennis regulators, the proposal to host a major 1,000-level mixed tournament in Saudi Arabia (one tier below the four Grand Slams) has at least three seasons left before January or February, and a loose gesture towards seismic changes, just a little more specific than a year ago, when he ignited the sport.
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The biggest asset of Saudi Arabia's three-pronged attack on tennis remains only the idea, with uncertainty on both sides about the size, timing and financing of the tournament. There is no guarantee that this will work. No decision has yet been made on who will take part or how much it will cost, according to people briefed on the discussions, who remain anonymous because they are not authorized to speak publicly about them.
The proposal became such a question mark that it barely featured in ATP and WTA Tours meetings with the four tennis associations controlling Grand Slam tournaments at this year's US Open. Months of discussions between Saudi sports leaders and ATP executives – closely watched by WTA leaders – failed to produce agreement on even the most basic tenets of the tennis tournament:
- When should such an event take place?
- Will it only apply to the best 56 players or will it be a larger draw?
- Will it be a mixed event, as the Saudis would prefer, on par with 1,000-level tournaments such as Indian Wells, Madrid and Rome – some of the most prestigious of their kind?
Increasing complaints from players about the length and logistics of the current tournament schedule have further complicated discussions. Tour officials know this is not the time to announce a new mandatory tournament, especially one that could shorten the duration of an off-season tournament that most say is already too short.
Moreover, the answers to the above questions will have a significant impact on how much money the event can generate and how much the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia (PIF) is willing to invest in the venture through its sports unit SURJ Sports Investment. The great promises made 12 months ago have come to an end.
PIF has partnered with ATP and WTA Tours on major sponsorship deals. (PIF/Getty Images)
“It wasn't the main topic of discussion because it doesn't make sense,” said one person involved in the Grand Slam meetings at the US Open. “We assume there is nothing to worry about.”
With a coup still looming, the Saudis have opted for a more deliberate approach, say people familiar with their plans – an approach that gives tennis an air of temporariness over the next few months. Saudi officials are reluctant to talk about any big plans they may have for tennis because they don't know where those plans might go.
They will test the waters at their biggest and most expensive exhibition – the Six Kings Slam offers one of the biggest prize money in tennis history.
The women will then arrive for the tour finals, allowing the country to gauge interest and determine how hard the kingdom should push to invest in tennis over the next decade. Saudi Arabia's contract with the WTA runs until 2026, which will enable all parties to learn about each other's strengths and weaknesses.
How many people will participate? Will the infrastructure hold up? Will media impressions come back? The plan is to see how these events develop before making any commitments to new ones.
This position is clearly different from the Saudis' actions this year. In quick succession, various national sports and entertainment units announced new initiatives that made the company one of the largest investors in tennis.
Three separate entities have made investments in tennis without much coordination, although outsiders often lump them together.
Last year, GEA presented the Six Kings Slam tournament in quick succession, and PIF announced major new sponsorship deals for the men's and women's tournaments, which included naming rights to the official rankings. The Saudi Arabian Ministry of Sports, the Saudi Tennis Federation (STF) and the WTA Tour subsequently announced a three-year contract to host the tournament finals. Nadal was announced as an STF ambassador who will help promote tennis in the country and validate his tennis interests in the eyes of the rest of the world.
MTP representatives held talks with the management of Sinclair Broadcast, the owner of Tennis Channel, regarding the acquisition of a majority stake in this network. According to people involved in those talks, who spoke anonymously to protect relationships, negotiations broke down when Sinclair raised its asking price from $750 million to more than $1 billion.
The moves raised the profile of Saudi tennis, but a potential new early-season tournament was seen as the most important and most divisive of tennis investments in Saudi Arabia. He applied to participate in the event through PIF and SURJ, but the financial consequences almost paled in comparison to the existential anxiety gripping tennis at the news of the kingdom's bid to participate in the tournament. It would cement Saudi Arabia's place at the sports center, bringing with it: its human rights record has been widely criticized.
After announcing the deal to host the WTA Finals in the spring, the Human Rights Watch said: “The torture and imprisonment of peaceful critics of the government continue. Courts impose decades in prison on Saudi women for tweets.
Former players, including Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, have publicly criticized “a partnership with a country that has a history of repressive laws against women, that criminalizes homosexuality and freedom of speech, and that in 2018 murdered Jamal Khashoggi, a dissident journalist who pretended to be to the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, to obtain the documents needed for marriage,” as Athlete he wrote in April.
When Saudi Arabia's pursuit of tennis first came to light at last year's Wimbledon, it prompted the Grand Slam tournaments to launch a counter-offensive that amounted to an attempted discipline grab.
Saudi Arabia's move into tennis has shocked the organizations behind Grand Slam tournaments. (Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images)
Tennis Australia had the most to lose. Any tournament early in the year would have a significant impact on build-up events in Australia and New Zealand ahead of the Australian Open.
The Grand Slam organizations, led by Tennis Australia, have joined forces to propose a new format for the entire season, including approximately 14 tournaments in the so-called “premium tour” for around 100 of the best players in the world.
The move was an attempt to separate major non-Grand Slam tournaments from the men's and women's tournaments. Grand Slam organizers also directed their efforts at players who had long complained about the tight schedule.
In response, the ATP and WTA continued their lucrative sponsorships with Saudi Arabia. These deals generated hundreds of millions of dollars in much-needed tour revenue, some of which will be passed on to players in the form of prize money and bonuses. Then at this year's Indian Wells, Grand Slam players began pitching their plan to influential tennis brokers, but couldn't present anything fully developed. That idea has also stalled, stifled by inertia and fragmentation at the heart of tennis's corridors of power.
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Since then, top players have again complained about the schedule, especially the tour's decision to extend several mandatory Masters 1000 tournaments from seven to 12 days, essentially making them two-week events.
These complaints have increased in recent weeks. Iga Świątek, world No. 1, complained of fatigue throughout the summer. Carlos Alcaraz, the sport's biggest young star, predicted that the current schedule “will kill us somehow” at a press conference at the Laver Cup, another exhibition event.
Adding another event before the Australian Open would leave players feeling obliged to keep their feet on the ground rather than build their fitness in Australia and New Zealand, where they can adjust to the time zone and climate in the weeks leading up to one of the four tournaments of the year. most important tournaments.
With the tours failing to deliver what the Saudis had hoped for, plans for a new event and the Saudis' biggest position in the sport remain in the works. Thanks to this, sports officials in the kingdom treated the upcoming tennis events as a laboratory experiment.
What happens beyond that remains a mystery.
But what happens over the next month, from how players experience the event to whether locals and tourists fill the stadium, will determine what happens in the still-unfinished road.
(Top photo: Adam Pretty/Getty Images)
