The WTA is counting on the Asia-Pacific region to boost its international growth, and putting great hope in China's ability to produce more elite players, its chairman and CEO said Sunday.
Bolstered by a new sponsorship deal with Chinese sporting goods firm Peak, Stacey Allaster on Sunday called the country ''an important strategic growth project for us.''
Allaster praised organizers of the China Open and said the tournament facilities in Beijing were outstanding and would only get better with the addition of a 15,000-seat, retractable roof stadium next year.
''It is absolutely amazing what the Beijing government and the China Open are doing for our sport,'' Allaster said at the WTA Championships in Doha. ''They are incredibly ambitious. They have made women's tennis a priority sport, and that is just simply fantastic for the WTA.''
But Allaster acknowledged there was ''plenty of education'' to do to get more Chinese people excited about tennis, including such basics as how to score a match. To help with that, the WTA has opened an office and plans to travel around the country with the Chinese Tennis Association to introduce the game.
''We have taken a play right out of (commissioner) David Stern's playbook from the NBA. We need to excite kids about our sport,'' she said. ''We need to get rackets in their hands and show them our sport is fun through tennis festivals throughout the country. That's created an opportunity for our brand, and also assets for our partners.''
China's 1.3 billion potential fans offer a a vast untapped market for the WTA and other sports federations. The WTA points out there are 130 million Chinese interested in tennis and 10 million recreational players - twice the number of those in France, an established market.
Chinese players such as Li Na and Zheng Jie have had great success lately, but tennis is still a relatively new sport in the country. It's still seen as a sport played by the upper class and even audiences at tournaments sometimes are at a loss as to how they should respond. During the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, local fans breached tennis etiquette by cheering during long rallies and sighing loudly over faults.
Allaster, meanwhile, said that the tour is thriving even amid a tough economic climate.
Along with Peak, the tour re-signed Sony Ericsson - a long-running sponsor- this year and added the Swedish-based cosmetics company Oriflame. It expects to announce another sponsor in the coming weeks and possibly as many as two more in the future - all of which Allaster said indicates the tour is flourishing even in tough economic times, Allaster said.
''We are strong. We've had the best commercial year in our history,'' Allaster said in an interview with The Associated Press. ''We've had three new partners, held our own in attendance and added three new events.''
