The\u00a0WTA Finals, the elite season-ending event in\u00a0women\u2019s tennis, will be held in Charlotte, North Carolina, for the next three years in a move that organizers hope will create \u201cthe Super Bowl for\u00a0women\u2019s sports.\u201d<\/p>\n
The tournament will be played at the Spectrum Center, home of the NBA\u2019s Charlotte Hornets, the WTA and the Charlotte Sports Foundation announced Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The year\u2019s top eight singles players and doubles teams qualify for the event, which is usually held in November.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur ambition is for the WTA Finals to be not only the premier championship in women\u2019s tennis, but one of the defining global events in women sports,\u201d\u00a0WTA chair Valerie Camillo\u00a0said. \u201cWe want to create the Super Bowl for women\u2019s sports. And not just the competition, but an event that is the annual gathering for women\u2019s tennis, women\u2019s sports, and women\u2019s sport business.<\/p>\n
\u201cAudiences are growing, investment is growing, female athletes are increasingly at the centre of sports and culture around the world. And women\u2019s tennis has helped lead and define that progress for more than 50 years. And we believe our biggest championship should reflect the scale of this moment,\u201d Camillo added.<\/p>\n
Camillo called it a \u201cminimum three-year deal. She added, \u201cWe\u2019ll see what goes on beyond that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The announcement comes at a time of financial difficulty for the WTA after it announced in July that it was opting out of the final year of\u00a0a three-year hosting arrangement with Saudi Arabia\u00a0to move this year\u2019s Finals to Indian Wells, California.<\/p>\n
There were concerns about going back to Saudi Arabia due to military conflicts in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
Camillo noted that \u201c2026 is a year of transition for the WTA\u201d and that \u201cwe are doing the normal belt tightening you would expect in any business while also absorbing the unexpected cost of relocating the WTA finals to Indian Wells.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s most important to know is that we have a clear path to deliver consistent, sustainable financial performance in 2027 and beyond,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
With Indian Wells now set to host only once, Charlotte will become the eighth different venue for the Finals since 2018.<\/p>\n
The WTA did not announce any prize money figures for the upcoming tournaments, and could struggle to match the record-setting amounts that were on offer in Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n
Elena Rybakina collected $5.23 million for winning the 2025 WTA Finals in Riyadh after going 5-0 at the event. The WTA said that was the largest payout in the history of women\u2019s sports. Aryna Sabalenka earned $2.7 million as runner-up.<\/p>\n
Rybakina also beat Sabalenka in Saturday\u2019s\u00a0U.S. Open final\u00a0and claimed the No. 1 ranking.<\/p>\n
Coco Gauff won the 2024 finals in Riyadh.<\/p>\n
The partnership will extend beyond the Finals. The WTA will also relocate its global headquarters from St. Petersburg, Florida, to Charlotte, as part of the deal.<\/p>\n
And there’s a plan to bring a WTA 500 tournament to Charlotte after 2029.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe WTA has always owned the WTA finals, but now going forward, we\u2019re going to operate it too,\u201d Camillo said. \u201cWe\u2019re taking control of the creation of the revenues and the controlling of the expenses and the delivery of the entire thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that allows us to control our own destiny,\u201d Camillo added. \u201cWhether it\u2019s around what we\u2019re doing with our media rights and our production, whether it’s related to the WTA finals, whether we\u2019re approaching our calendar, we\u2019re going to be making bold and aggressive moves for women\u2019s tennis that shapes the future that we want rather than reacting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Camillo replaced retiring chair Steve Simon at the end of last year.<\/p>\n
She previously oversaw business operations for the Philadelphia Flyers and Wells Fargo Center as the president and CEO of the sports and entertainment division of Comcast Spectacor, and has held senior roles with the Washington Nationals and the NBA.<\/p>\n
Asked if there was a desire to eventually merge with the ATP Finals \u2014 the men\u2019s season-ending event \u2014 Camillo said \u201cthere hasn\u2019t been an in-depth conversation about merging\u201d the two tournaments.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that when we create our ambition, people are going to want to merge with us on this event and many more,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Condensed schedule to fit between NBA games<\/p>\n
The move to the Hornets arena during the NBA season means that the Finals will be condensed from eight to five days.<\/p>\n
That means the traditional schedule of two singles and two doubles matches per day could become four singles and four doubles matches per day.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are exploring a series of alternate formats,\u201d Camillo said.<\/p>\n
The Spectrum Center has already hosted high-profile tennis exhibition events in recent years.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs an organization, our mission is quite simple,\u201d Will Pitts, CEO of the Charlotte Sports Foundation, said of the Finals. \u201cIt\u2019s drive economic impact and add to the quality of life through high-profile sporting events and unique partnerships. And this certainly does that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The move comes as Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper is investing an additional\u00a0$500 million into ongoing stadium renovations\u00a0with an eye toward potentially bringing the Super Bowl, NFL draft, 2031 Women\u2019s World Cup and other major sporting events to Charlotte.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The\u00a0WTA Finals, the elite season-ending event in\u00a0women\u2019s tennis, will be held in Charlotte, North Carolina, for the next…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":898075,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-898074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=898074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/898075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=898074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=898074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=898074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}