WTA Lifts Suspension on Tournaments in China

The WTA’s suspension of Chinese tournaments was more symbolic than substantive. China canceled nearly all international sports events in 2021 and in 2022 in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Even without the WTA suspension, there almost certainly would have been no tour events in the country in 2022.

But in a landscape in which global sports leaders have often kowtowed to China and its economic clout, the WTA’s move in 2021 still sent a strong message and made the tour an outlier. The men’s tennis tour, the ATP, did not follow suit and never suspended any of its Chinese events, including the Masters 1000 tournament in Shanghai. With Chinese authorities lifting their pandemic-related restrictions, it is scheduled to be played this year for the first time since 2019.

Through the years, China has become a more important market for the WTA than for the ATP. The women’s tour held nine events in China in 2019, accounting for approximately one-third of the WTA’s annual revenue. The most significant of those tournaments was the season-ending WTA Finals in Shenzhen, which awarded a record $14 million in prize money in 2019, the first year of a lucrative 10-year deal.

The tour, which has long relied heavily on revenue from the WTA Finals, took big financial hits when the event was canceled in 2020 and then moved to Guadalajara, Mexico, in 2021 and to Fort Worth in 2022. In Guadalajara and Fort Worth, the WTA had to pay the significantly lower prize money figure, $5 million, itself.

Simon said the tour will resume play in China in September. Though the schedule is not yet complete, he said he expected to hold eight tournaments there this year: regular tour events in Zhengzhou, Beijing, Guangzhou, Nanchang, Hong Kong and Wuhan; the WTA Elite Trophy in Zhuhai; and the Finals, which Simon indicated would be staged in Shenzhen through 2031 to fulfill the original 10-year commitment.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/13/sports/tennis/wta-china-peng-shuai.html