The Paris Masters will debut in its new La Defense Arena home this month, with the showpiece court in the venue set to be trumped by only the US Open’s Arthur Ashe Stadium on the current global circuit.<\/p>\n
Its new base, an indoor arena opened in 2017 in the western suburbs of Paris, is also the home of French Top 14 rugby club Racing 92.<\/p>\n
Tournament director Cedric Pioline spoke to AFP ahead of the 2025 edition of the ATP Masters 1000 event, which will run from October 27th to November 2nd.<\/p>\n
“The centre court will have a capacity of around 17,500 people, making it the second biggest court in the world for perennial events (tournaments held annually), behind the US Open centre court,” the former world number five-ranked player revealed.<\/p>\n
“There will be just over 4,000 seats on Court No. 1 and 4,000 on Court No. 2. Court No. 3 has a capacity of a few hundred seats.”<\/p>\n
In early 2024, organisers signed a 10-year contract to stage the event at La Defense Arena, a decision made in order to comply with ATP requirements for its biggest tournaments.<\/p>\n
Rumours had long circulated that the event would lose its Masters status due to the size of the Bercy Arena — its home since 1986.<\/p>\n
“Without any changes on our part, over a medium-term cycle -\u2013 we are talking about four to five years \u2013- there was a possibility of being downgraded (to a 500 or 250 event),” Pioline said.<\/p>\n
As well as enjoying a boost in seating capacity, the tournament’s new venue will allow for more room on court for players.<\/p>\n
“We have also decided to increase the playing surface for the comfort of the players,” Pioline said. “(At Bercy), the outside courts were a little small in relation to the physical commitment of the players and their coverage of the court.<\/p>\n
“On Courts 1 and 2, the ceiling height was insufficient, at least by standard measurements: it should have been 12 metres (according to ATP specifications), but it was slightly less than 10 metres. And overall, it felt a bit cramped.”<\/p>\n
“We simply needed to be able to evolve,” he added of the decision to leave Bercy.<\/p>\n
‘Confident’ for Alcaraz and Sinner<\/p>\n
Pioline emphasised that one tradition would be carried on from Bercy to La Defense: the Paris Masters’ glitzy player walk-ons.<\/p>\n
However, he added that too would be updated.<\/p>\n
“The tunnel that was created (at Bercy) in the 2010s was a great innovation,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We came to the conclusion that a new venue meant a new show. It will be much more vertical, even more based on laser-type lighting.<\/p>\n
“It has to be a truly immersive experience.”<\/p>\n
Pioline shared he was “confident” the experience for fans would include seeing the top two players in the men’s game, Carlos Alcaraz<\/a> and Jannik Sinner<\/a>.<\/p>\n “The thousand ATP points awarded to the winner will carry weight” in the battle between the Spaniard and the Italian to finish the season at the top of the world rankings, he argued.<\/p>\n After injuring his ankle at the end of September during his victory at the Japan Open, world number one Alcaraz decided to skip the recent Shanghai Masters.<\/p>\n Sinner was forced to withdraw in the third round of the event in China.<\/p>\n With the ATP Finals scheduled in Turin from November 9th to 16th, followed by the Davis Cup finals from November 18th to 23rd in Bologna, the end-of-season schedule is “clearly busy, but we are confident”, Pioline said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Paris Masters will debut in its new La Defense Arena home this month, with the showpiece court…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-197411","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}