This article was last updated on April 16, 2022
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There are, fair to say, some extenuating circumstances involved. The biggest story in tennis right now is still that of Peng Shuai, the Chinese star whose safety and exact whereabouts have been a matter of concern since she accused former vice premier Zhang Gaoli of sexual assault on 2nd November. The ramifications are still building; the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) has now confirmed it will suspend all events in China and Hong Kong while it awaits a full investigation into the allegations.
The next item on the agenda is whether the men’s world number one Novak Djokovic will take a Covid-19 vaccine ahead of the 2022 Australian Open. The Serbian’s well-recorded scepticism lends many to believe he will not, which means he will be ineligible to enter the state of Victoria and bid for a tenth title in Melbourne.
On the one hand, there is no chance of direct comparison here. These are developments with consequences and influences way beyond sport: geopolitics, personal freedoms, women’s rights and safety, public health and the route out of the biggest global crisis in decades.
On the other, there is much that can be read into how tennis is filtered through the media to a more casual following – via individuals, and the Grand Slams. Within that lie some of the problems the Davis Cup, the men’s national team tournament, has spent years trying to solve. The question is whether solving them is in its best interests. That is a quandary shared by a whole category of sports events in the 2020s.
The closing stages of the 2021 Davis Cup have been running since 25th November across three European cities: Madrid, Innsbruck in Austria, and Turin in Italy. The semi-finals and final will be played in the Spanish capital over the weekend, culminating on 5th December. The home-or-away ties that long defined the 121-year-old tournament are now only present in the qualifying stage, after a far-reaching overhaul in 2019.
In 2018 the International Tennis Federation (ITF) signed a 25-year, US$3 billion agreement with Kosmos Tennis, an investment group fronted by FC Barcelona soccer player Gerard Pique and backed by Hiroshi Mikitani, the chairman and chief executive of Japanese ecommerce and media group Rakuten. Kosmos effectively took on the commercial responsibility for the tournament from the governing body, including the design of its format.
Its vision is for a true World Cup of men’s tennis, with the very best teams converging on one place for an annual season-ending jamboree. It hoped to take the best elements of the existing Davis Cup – colourful partisan crowds and intriguing matchups involving players who might not always meet or partner on the circuit – but concentrate its power and add promotional clarity.
The old format, which criss-crossed the globe and intercut the season all the way to its one-off final, provided peaks but interest was localised and sporadic. The fear was always that the best players would be unavailable, an issue Kosmos has looked to address with a US$20 million prize money pot.
That was the theory. In practice, the tinkering has already begun. According to the BBC, Kosmos is ‘believed to have lost tens of millions of dollars on the 2019 event’, in part because of underwhelming attendances. The pandemic brought its own interruption last year while this year’s matches in Innsbruck are being played behind closed doors due to an Austrian lockdown.
Some early costs are inevitable but that scenario will never be tolerated for too long. In a bid to shore up its model, Kosmos is understood to be about to get ITF clearance for a five-year hosting deal with Abu Dhabi. That brings its own challenges, however, including travel for fans and for some players late in the year.
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