Dubai: Tickets for the Dubai leg of the inaugural edition of the International Premier Tennis League (IPTL) will go on sale from the second week of September.
The brainchild of India’s multiple doubles Grand Slam champion Mahesh Bhupathi, the IPTL will be launched in November with four teams representing India, Singapore, UAE and the Philippines.
Except for former world number one Roger Federer, the remaining top players have confirmed their participation for the inaugural edition of the league, which has been inspired by cricket’s Indian Premier League.
Britain’s Andy Murray will be leading the Manila Mavericks, 14-time Grand Slam champion Rafael Nadal will at the helm for the Indian Aces, former American great Andre Agassi with the Singapore Slammers and world No 1 Novak Djokovic with the Dubai-based UAE Royals.
With a prize purse of $1 million (Dh3.67 million), the IPTL will get under way in Manila on November 28 with each team facing each other at all four venues. The action will move to Singapore (December 2-4), then on to New Delhi (December 6-8) and finally arrive at the Hamdan Sports Complex along the Dubai Bypass Road from December 11-13.
Organisers have tweaked tennis rules to make the ties as an entertainment for spectators. Each tie will consist of five single-set matches – men’s and women’s singles, men’s doubles, mixed doubles and past champions singles. Every time a player wins a game in a match, the team gets one point. The team that wins the most games at the end of five matches will win the tie.
“We are going to start with the marketing very soon and people need to keep the dates free. The tickets will go on sale by the second week of September. At the moment we are debating whether we want to have daily passes or one single pass for all three days just to keep the festive atmosphere going,” Bhupathi told Gulf News on Friday.
He added that tickets for the Manila leg will go on sale at the end of this month, followed by Singapore and Dubai in September and finally, New Delhi from October 1.
