Dubai: The brains behind the Dubai Tennis Championship have vouched that the event will continue playing its dual role of promoting “Brand Dubai” while acting as one of the sporting highlights in the UAE.
Following its inception in 1993 on the ATP Men’s Tour, a second tournament was added on the women’s WTA Tour in 2000 to make it two weeks of top-quality tennis. Over the years both tournaments have attracted some of the best players in the world and till date, a staggering number of 17 world number ones have featured in the Dubai Tennis Championship.
The Dubai Tennis Stadium has played host to the event since the first year with organisers and owners Dubai Duty Free ensuring fresh additions to the infrastructure each year. With the ATP once suggesting a move of the men’s competition to a bigger facility a few years back, the organisers even debated hosting it at the Dubai Sports City.
However, better sense prevailed and they ultimately decided to continue with the Dubai Tennis Stadium as the home of the Dubai Tennis Championship. After more than two decades, would they be tempted to have this event as an economically viable business model where it can pay for itself or even make profits?
“I really doubt it. Part of our duty in staging this event is to promote Dubai. It’s our own investment. And if you take a look at the bigger picture we have the Irish Village and a full array of restaurants operating around it. The tournament is an operation in itself and I doubt we would change anything in this model as it is working just fine for everyone — some superb tennis and the promotion of Dubai,” Colm McLoughlin, Executive Vice President, Dubai Duty Free, told Gulf News.
Selling and promoting
“Supposing we were an outside company and we were called “Tennis Operators Limited”, then based on what we are doing, we would be going to the Government and asking them to sponsor our event as we are providing $100 million (Dh367 million) publicity for Dubai. But we are not such a company and part of our responsibility definitely lies in selling and promoting Brand Dubai,” he added.
An international company called the International Competitiveness Council chose Dubai Duty Free to carry out a study as a sample company for good practice. The independent study based on the tennis tournament and put the media value of the event at $381 million (Dh1.4 billion), a figure that reportedly rose to $500 million last year.
“We would love to hear that this figure has gone up, and for this we would need to maintain the standard of this tournament,” McLoughlin said.
A few years back, Dubai Duty Free tried out an experiment by awarding Barclays Bank the title sponsorship. While it worked out well for some cash injection, the organisers have no plans to pursue this idea in the future. “It’s very important for us to defray the costs a little bit, but it’s also important to keep the identity of the tournament. We were very happy with Barclays, and certainly if Barclays or anyone else wanted to join us then we would always be happy, but not as title sponsors,” McLoughlin noted.
“We have decided that it is better for us and the tournament that it remains the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championship. And it would be our intention to retain that. In an attempt to make it more economically viable, we did raise ticket prices a little bit this year, but we would not dream of raising them to a level where they would pay for everything,” he asserted.
Mistakes
“It is important for us to have good players come and participate and it is equally important for us to try and improve the event all the time. After each year our committee sits down and has an assessment of what we have done, the mistakes we’ve made, the complaints we’ve got and we do our best not to repeat these for the following year,” he disclosed.
In 10 of the past 11 years, the players on the ATP World Tour have voted Dubai as the best 500 event. “Perhaps, we judge ourselves a little bit, and when we have the players telling us each and every year we are the best then it makes perfect sense to have the honour of organising such an event that puts Dubai in the limelight,” he said.
There have been calls in the past for a shift of the tournament to the outskirts of Dubai, primarily to avoid traffic congestion and parking woes. However, the RTA jumped in the fray and offered free shuttle services to the venue during the two weeks of competition. “No, we don’t want to shift. We discussed, and it’s no secret with the Dubai Sports City, about their stadium which we would have shared. We also reserved some land next to the Rugby 7s ground along the Al Ain road. But now that we’ve got great cooperation from the RTA, we are perfectly at ease here,” he said.
“Part of their comments was the convenience of having everything in one location. Everything is in one package and that’s what the players love here. The practice, the swimming pool, the sauna, the gym, the physio…everything is in one place. This is the real home of tennis. It is the permanent home,” McLoughlin added.
