New allegations emerge from founder Mahesh Bhupathi, claiming that Financial problems were behind the absence of Serena Williams and Roger Federer in this season’s IPTL.
In a recent with interview with ESPN UK, Mahesh Bhupathi said that they had to tell Serena Williams and Roger Federer not to come as they were struggling financially. It is no secret that the IPTL have been struggling financially to even have the competition been played this year. As a result the competition was shortened to nine days and only four teams competed in season three of the IPTL rather than the five teams that have competed in past seasons. This is what Bhupathi said on the absence of Williams and Federer, “Just to be clear, they didn’t pull out. We had to request them not to come. The revenues on this side weren’t matching the expenses. If we went ahead with it we would have dug ourselves in a big hole and they were very understanding about it. Obviously if Roger was here I am sure we would have probably sold out the stadium. When we announced ticket sales, 15 days into it with Roger and Serena’s names on the ticket we sold about 18 Lakhs of tickets. So that wasn’t the case, that’s why we panicked.”
Also in the interview he expressed his discomfort at the fact that some of the players got paid seven months late, “Like I said, we had that challenge with one owner last year and we were in a financial hole. We ended up paying all the players probably seven month late last year and we paid them all with interest. Yes, there were late payments but my job having been a player and a colleague to most of them, they know that I am never going to stiff them and the fact that they all came back was testimony to that.” However despite the financial difficulty, Mahesh is confident that the IPTL will return for another season in 2017 saying “I am feeling pretty good about it.”
Well everyone hopes that Mahesh will have sorted the financial problems out and that the IPTL will come back stronger than ever in 2017, with even bigger names.
