Russian tennis chief favours relocating ATP World Tour Finals to Moscow

Moscow, Oct 29 (IANS) Russian Tennis Federation (RTF) president Shamil Tarpishchev has said that he supports the idea of Moscow hosting one of the biggest Associate of Tennis Professionals (ATP) events, but was uncertain about the prospects of finding money for this event.

Head of the VTB Arena Park project Andrei Peregudov had said on Wednesday that the ATP World Tour Finals, held annually at the O2 Arena in London, may be relocated to Moscow's new VTB Arena in the future, reports Tass. And his views were supported on Friday by Tarpishchev.

"It will be definitely good for tennis in Russia," Tarpishchev said. "It will be good for the development of Russian tennis."

The ATP World Tour Finals is an annual professional men's tennis tournament featuring top eight players in singles competitions and top eight pairs in doubles competitions based upon the results of an ATP season.

"The other question, however, is whether we will be able to find money for hosting such event," Tarpishchev said. "I am raising this issue because a similar tournament for women costs about $30 million to organise. This is the price to host one tournament."

The prestigious tournament was first held in 1970. Since then it was held at different venues, but starting in 2009 and until the present day it has been hosted annually by the O2 Arena in the British capital of London.

The ATP World Tour Finals tournament is regarded as the fifth most important tennis event following all Grand Slam series and has a total of $7 million in prize money up for grabs.

The tournament was hosted 13 times by New York and seven times by London. It was also held six times in Germany's Frankfurt, five times in China's Shanghai and four times in Germany's Hannover.

--IANS

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