15 million euros in tickets sold, 25 million from 16 sponsors. These are just some of the astonishing figures that make the ATP Finals one of the biggest sports events of the year.
LONDON – The ATP Finals are certainly one of the most important and lucrative events on the sports calendar. For this year’s opening Sunday, the O2 Arena registered almost 34,000 spectators. 17,800 showed up for the day session that featured Roger Federer and Jack Sock, while 16,117 attended the evening session with Sasha Zverev and Marin Cilic. 33,065 and 32,993 attended Monday’s and Tuesday’s sessions respectively. Despite Andy Murray’s absence, 230,000 tickets had already been sold before the tournament started: An astonishing number, considering that the O2 Arena can potentially accommodate a total of 300,000 spectators throughout the entire eight-day competition. Last year’s total spectators reached 263,000 with Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic staging an exciting battle at the top of the world rankings, which allowed the ATP Finals to be recognized as the fourth biggest sports event of the year in the United Kingdom. Considering that the average ticket cost is approximately 40 pounds, the ATP Finals registered ticket sales for a total of 12 million pounds (more than 14 million euro).
In 2016 the sixteen main sponsors that support the ATP Tour overall paid a shocking 21.43 million pounds for the Finals alone, four times more than the WTA Finals in Singapore (5.32 million). It is quite a challenging task to calculate the exact revenue resulting from broadcasting contracts with 50 countries, including 14 in Asia, 2 in the Middle East, 5 in America, 2 in Africa, 1 in Oceania and 26 in Europe. Each country has different methods to calculate an event’s profitability, depending on the type of network, cable packages, hypothetic audience and many other parameters. Nevertheless, rumor has it that revenues from broadcasting contracts and TV rights easily surpassed 50 million pounds. In the United Kingdom the day sessions are covered by the BBC, while the evening sessions are broadcasted by Sky Sports.
The competition offers a prize-money of 8 million U.S. dollars to the eight players that qualify for the event.
Looking at these incredible figures, it is easy to understand why the ATP has decided to stage its tour Finals in London for almost a decade, despite the original idea of moving the tournament to different cities every five years. Ticket sales are only a minimum part of the revenues, while broadcasting contracts and TV rights represent the biggest slice of the pie along with the main sponsorships, endorsements and commercial spaces that are on display at the O2 Arena. The ATP never discloses the exact figures, but it is obvious that the total amount is astronomical. Apparently one of the main P.R. Suites was sold to the two major tournament sponsors – Nitto and J.P. Morgan – for 3 million pounds.
When a tournament is that important and has such an incredible following, the profits are enormous and continue to grow year after year. Compared to 2009 when the O2 Arena in London hosted the event for the first time, the profits have grown 215%.
The sponsors not only monopolize signs and banners around the court, but they are everywhere inside the venue. The Fan Zone is an amazing area where the spectators can measure their serve speed with Ricoh, witness how racquets are stringed with Tecnifibre or win tennis outfits with Lacoste.
According to a study conducted by the Sport Business Group, in 2016 sponsors invested a total of 550 million euro in the ATP and WTA Finals, the four Slams and the ATP and WTA tour events. 84 different corporations stroke deals with the four Slams, while 843 companies did business with approximately 100 events on the ATP and WTA tours.
Chris Kermode – the tournament director at the ATP Finals since 2009 – has a very clear plan: “Our goal is to attract a younger audience than the traditional tennis crowd. The 20-something target audiences represent a big and extremely interesting market for us.”
While at Wimbledon silence and some sort of sophisticated politeness usually abound, at the 02 Arena rock music loudly resonates during the changeovers, spider-cams fly around the venue to immortalize the excitement of the spectators and a resounding heartbeat is heard when a player decides to challenge a line call. Everything is staged to engage the spectators with a clear marketing plan based upon a dynamic entertainment that should guarantee business growth.
With tennis being an individual sport, it is relatively easy to create characters, stars and entertainment compared to other sports. During a tennis match, a player can establish a deeper connection with the audience than athletes that compete in team sports.
The Next-Gen ATP Finals that have recently taken place in Milan copied many features from the London event. The WTA Finals in Istanbul were also hugely inspired by the ATP Finals, without having the same audience that a city like London can offer. It is somehow easier for female tennis stars like Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova to stand out in terms of fame and recognition, as they have to compete with fewer popular female athletes from other sports. Instead, male tennis players have to compete with the likes of Hamilton Lewis, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi or Valentino Rossi.
When a country finally produces a great tennis champion, the numbers in terms of TV audience are absolutely scintillating. In England the most viewed TV program in 2013 was the Wimbledon final won by Andy Murray, who became the first British man to capture the title in 77 years. Li Na’s legendary victory at the 2011 French Open was watched by 300 million Chinese viewers.
With the support of the new sponsor Nitto that replaced Barclay’s Bank, the ATP Finals will certainly stay at the O2 Arena in London until 2020. In my opinion, they could stay there forever
(Article translation provided by T&L Global – Translation & Language Solutions – www.t-lglobal.com )
