Saudi Public Funding Fund Companions with Ladies’s Tennis Affiliation for Groundbreaking Settlement

The Saudi Public Funding Fund is the primary ever group to be named in affiliation with the Ladies’s Tennis Affiliation World Rankings as a part of a multi-year partnership settlement.

This announcement represents the Saudi Public Funding Fund’s newest exercise on this planet of tennis after it entered right into a “strategic partnership” with the Affiliation of Skilled Tennis Gamers earlier this 12 months .

“Collectively, we look ahead to nurturing gifted gamers all through the season as we proceed to develop the game, entice extra tennis followers and encourage extra younger folks to take up the sport,” stated Marina Storti, head of economic elements at WTA.

This information exhibits extra radical transformations for the Ladies’s Skilled Federation, which was beforehand reluctant to simply accept a partnership with Saudi Arabia.

Outgoing CEO Steve Simon stated final 12 months that the dominion would increase “large points” by internet hosting ladies’s tennis tournaments.

Officers introduced final month that the ultimate match of the ladies’s tennis season can be held within the Saudi capital, Riyadh, from 2024 to 2026, because the Saudi Tennis Federation will supply a report prize cash of $15.25 million this 12 months.

This information got here regardless of the opposition of former stars Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, and Russian Daria Kasatkina, who introduced her lesbianism in 2022, additionally expressed her doubts.

Ladies’s rights activists and members of the LGBT neighborhood accused the Kingdom of “washing its popularity by means of sport” after spending enormous sums of cash on soccer, Formulation 1 and golf.

Mohammed Al-Sayyad, Director of the Company Identification Division on the Saudi Public Funding Fund, stated that the Authority would proceed its work “in selling and growing ladies’s sports activities.”

“We look ahead to working with the WTA to extend participation and encourage a brand new era of expertise,” he stated in an announcement.