British Tennis Goes Downhill As ATP Finals Gets A New Home

The second highest pride of British tennis, after their Wimbledon tradition, the ATP Finals, has relocated their venue from the O2 Arena. The executives at the Association of Tennis Professionals have moved the year-end tournament to the Italian city of Turin since London’s 12-year-old tenure is will be concluded in the year 2020.

The ATP executives have selected the city of Turin and the ATP Finals will be hosted there for the next five years from 2021 to 2025. The top eight men on the ATP roster will compete for their highest-ranked indoors tennis title on the Pala Alpitour stadium in Italy. Besides Turin, the Japanese capital, Tokyo was also one of the major contenders to host the ATP Finals. 

While submitting their applications for hosting the ATP Finals, Turin initially missed the deadline for submitting their documents and was a late entry in the list of contenders, However, now they have surpassed the shortlisted cities, Tokyo, Singapore, and Manchester and received the hosting rights. 

Apart from their prime event of Rome Masters, Italy has now got an opportunity to add glory to their tennis. “Our congratulations to Turin on putting together such a comprehensive and impressive bid,” the ATP Executive Chairman & President, Chris Kermode said.

“Italy provides us with one of the strongest and most established tennis markets in Europe and has a proven track record for hosting world-class tennis events with the Internazionali BNL d’Italia in Rome, as well as the NextGen ATP Finals in Milan”.

The viewership of tennis was significantly escalated in Britain and with the British channels airing the ATP Finals, it gave more exposure of tennis to the British audience and made them realize that there is more tennis beyond the SW19 major.

The men’s year-end game in London contributed around 15 percentage of ATP’s total revenue and last year, $144 million was gained from the O2 Arena. The change of venue will consequently diminish the number of British audiences watching the ATP Finals.

“The ATP Finals is the biggest and most prestigious event that we have at the ATP,” the World Number one, Novak Djokovic said. “It’s a tournament that has historically moved around and so I’m very excited to see it move to Turin from 2021. It’s still a few years away but I know that the players will be very excited to compete there, and I also hope to be part of what will be a very special event.”