This time it’s done: Saudi Arabia will host the next three editions of the Women’s Tennis Masters, despite criticism of its women’s rights policy, a new big event for the Gulf monarchy determined to increase its influence in the sport.
“Riyadh, capital of Saudi Arabia, will host the WTA Masters from 2024 to 2026,” the body which manages the women’s professional circuit announced in a press release on Thursday.
The WTA had initially given up, under pressure from critics, to organize its major end-of-season tournament in Saudi Arabia and had turned towards Dallas in 2022 and Cancun, in Mexico, in 2023. But the flaws of the Mexican organization may have decided the body to accept Saudi petrodollars.
This choice “is based on a presence of more than twenty years of the WTA in the Middle East”, explains the organization.
Forgotten, therefore, the criticisms in particular from the legends Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova who notably estimated last year that “the unequal status of women remained deeply anchored in Saudi law”.
“Engine of progress”
The president of the Saudi Tennis Federation Arij Mutabagani, the first woman elected at the head of a sports federation in the country, wanted to be reassuring on this point.
“Hosting the WTA Masters is of immense importance for the future of tennis in Saudi Arabia and the development of sport in general (…) Our country is moving forward. Much has already been done and many historic advances have been made by women in all sectors in recent years, sport being a driver of progress throughout our society,” assures Ms. Mutabagani in the WTA press release. .
The agreement will also have a big financial impact: the 2024 edition of the Masters will offer a record overall purse of $15.25 million “with additional increases in 2025 and 2026,” according to the press release.
“The partnership also provides for other future investments in the development and growth of women’s tennis,” specifies the WTA.
As far as Saudi Arabia is concerned, this new major event in international sport is added to a whole series of investments – which amount to billions of dollars – in world sport (golf, football, boxing, rallying, F1. ..).
Already a partner of the ATP
In tennis, Saudi Arabia became last February, via its sovereign wealth fund (PIF), “the official partner of the ATP ranking”, and joined “the ATP tournaments of Indian Wells, Miami, Madrid, Beijing and the end-of-year ATP Masters, in addition to the Next Gen Masters, organized in Jeddah until 2027.”
An exhibition with the elite of world tennis is already scheduled for October: Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz will be joined by Jannik Sinner, Daniil Medvedev, Holger Rune. Even Rafael Nadal, whose career is coming to an end, is announced.
It must be said that the Spanish champion with 22 Grand Slam titles, who will celebrate his 38th birthday on June 3, was named ambassador of the Saudi Tennis Federation at the start of the year.
Among the women, the Tunisian Ons Jabeur and the Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka, then respectively 6e and 2e world championships, participated in an exhibition match in Riyadh in 2023.
Jabeur supports the organization of the WTA Masters in Riyadh: in February, she assured AFP that those who were opposed to this possibility should “better informed” about the commitment of the Saudi authorities to the sport.
The Saudi Minister of Sports, Abdulaziz ben Turki al-Faisal, assured AFP on Thursday that the WTA Masters had “the power to inspire our young girls and women well beyond sport”.
“There is no reason to be surprised because the transformation that we often talk about is driven by our desire to encourage the development of sport among both men and women, with the same access and the same opportunities,” he said.
Saudi head of a human rights organization based in Berlin (Esohr), Taha al-Hajji nevertheless confided to AFP at the same time that these pharaonic investments in sport were part of an attempt by the kingdom to use the “soft power” to “wash its image and mask, through stars and sport, its violations” of human rights.