Dubai: The creator of the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships has told Gulf News he is pleased with the steady growth of the annual event.
Colm McLoughlin, Executive Vice President of Dubai Duty Free, the tournament’s owners and organisers, has been working on the popular, award-winning competition for 23 years now.
Last year, 106,000 spectators turned up over the two weeks as Venus Williams won the women’s crown and Roger Federer the men’s.
This year witnessed even better attendances over the fortnight, with 110,000 fans braving some unpleasant weather conditions on a couple of days to watch some of the world’s best players in action. Simona Halep of Romania took the women’s title and Federer tamed arch-rival Novak Djokovic to claim his seventh Dubai victory.
And McLoughlin said on the final day of this year’s tournament: “Crowd attendance has been up by six per cent compared to last year and this is indicative of how the event has been growing as one of the most popular sporting events in the region.
“The attendance is like an absolute dream and we can’t ask for more than that. For years now our tournament has persistently received the attention of some of the best tennis players, including Novak, Roger and Andy [Murray]. This, in turn, has pushed us to innovate and have something new every year and make things exciting for the players and spectators.”
The Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships have won a total of 20 ATP/WTA awards since the start of the men’s event in 1993 and the women’s in 2001. Last week, the men’s tournament received its 11th award in 12 years, capping possibly one of the best-attended tournaments in the history of the competition.
“The inclusion of the hotel on site has certainly increased the interest of players as they have everything on-site now. And if they do want to do something special during the event then Dubai has so much to offer. We’ve grown in stature as a tournament and, to achieve this, the entire DDF team, led by Tournament Director Salah Tahlak, has done a marvelous job,” McLoughlin said.
This year JP Morgan stepped in as a major sponsor for the tournament, which has an equal prize money purse of $2.5 million (Dh9.18 million) for the two events.
“We were among the first to have even prize money so many years back and it is our endeavour and commitment to try even harder to find ways to innovate and make this tournament better each year,” he added.
