International Premier Tennis league IPTL

[Hoergren]

Hi

Here you can read who is participating on women and mens side and which groups they are placed in:

International Premier Tennis League: All You Need to Know About IPTL Draft in Dubai

The draft of the teams in IPTL

They are deciding which team they are in right now and for which city and here they are:

A total sum of $23,975,000 was raised for the four teams on Monday.

Organisers are calling the IPTL “the answer to a growing demand for world class tennis in the Middle East and Asia” and it’s set to take place from November 27 to December 14, 2014.

Team Mumbai:
Rafael Nadal, Pete Sampras, Ana Ivanovic, Gael Monfils, Rohan Bopanna, Sania Mirza and Fabrice Santoro.

Team Bangkok:
Andy Murray, Victoria Azarenka, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Carlos Moya, Daniel Nestor and Kirsten Flipkens.

Team Singapore:
Andre Agassi, Serena Williams, Tomas Berdych, Lleyton Hewitt, Patrick Rafter, Daniela Hantuchova, Bruno Soares and Nick Kyrgios.

Team Dubai:
Novak Djokovic, Caroline Wozniacki, Goran Ivanisevic, Janko Tipsarevic, Nenad Zimonjic, Martina Hingis and Malek Jaziri.

Organisers said just under US$24million had been spent by the teams on the 28 players sold but details of how that split down were not revealed.

 

[Hoergren]

A little bit more about this event as written in Bleacher Report - here is the link and some extracts from the article.

About the IPTL

Each team had roughly £6.6 million to spend during the draft to sign six to 10 marquee players, according to Naveen Ullal of International Business Times (via Sky Sports).

It seems as though the players involved are sold on the cause, too. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga was pleased to hear that his name was called during the draft for the Bangkok team, where he'll join the likes of Andy Murray among others:

Happy to hear I just got drafted to Bangkok @iptl
— Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (@tsonga7) March 2, 2014

The format is also unique in that it consists of five sets per match, with one set of men's singles, women's singles, doubles, mixed doubles and a fifth-set battle between legends as a tiebreaker, per Ullal.

The best players still active today were labeled as icons, with the men being Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Murray, Stanislas Wawrinka, Sampras and Agassi. Serena Williams, Victoria Azarenka and Caroline Wozniacki were labeled icons on the women's side.

What will be most interesting is to see how teams game plan in terms of doubles, because that should ultimately determined who wins overall. It should also see some world-class players in unusual doubles situations if their team must win a set to keep a match going.

 

[Correspondent Kiu]

A whole new league?

Interesting.

 

[Hoergren]

A little bit more - here extracts from an article in Tennis X:

http://www.tennis-x.com/xblog/2014-03-02/15002.php

The format is simple. Similar to World TeamTennis, played during the summer in the U.S., each “match” will consist of one no-ad set of men’s singles, women’s singles, mixed doubles, men’s doubles and if tied 2-2 then legends.

“I think it’s a fantastic concept if it happens. I hope and I believe it will,” Djokovic said earlier this week. “Most of the players have been informed about it for, you know, a long period of time. We have been discussing about eventual participation in the event, and it’s a very positive thing for the sport.

“It’s going to promote tennis in the Asian part of the world. That is a huge market. It’s a fun concept. It lets the players enjoy in the court and off the court together.”

Each team, per reports, is budgeted for minimum of $4M in player salaries, a figure that could climb as high as $10M.

According to reports Nadal has been offered $1 million per match, just to play one, maybe two sets of tennis. Djokovic, Agassi, Serena and Sampras will also command similar high dollar appearance fee amounts for travelling to Asia during the holidays. So for players naturally it is a “fantastic concept”.

Djokovic’s new coach, Boris Becker, just so happens to be a league co-founder along with Mahesh Bhupahti. Said Becker last month, “This is something that tennis needs. Back in my time we would have loved to have a series of tournaments in Asia, where the demand for world class tennis as an entertainment concept merges with the needs and wishes of millions of fans.”

But there are more questions than answers early on with IPTL:
Where’s the money coming from to pay these high priced stars?
How many matches, for example, will Nadal and Sampras or Murray and Agassi, really play together, if any?
Where will the players play? What venue? On what surface?
Who owns these “teams”?
Won’t flying an IPTL “team” from Dubai to Singapore be expensive? Djokovic won’t be flying coach either!
What happens to the undrafted players, are they the reserves when the stars opt out?
Are there global TV deals in place, sponsors, infrastructure?

What if a match gets hit by bad weather?

 

[jhar26]

I hate to be so negative, but I think this is a useless non-event that is only about the money and makes a tennis calender that is already bursting at the seams as it is even more overloaded. Only good thing about it is that it won't last.

 

[ozza]

I just can't see how this is possibly a success.

UK journalists are showing optimism about it compared to US journalists who are a lot more skeptical. I just don't see it though. I think UK journalists are obviously familiar with the success of IPL in cricket in this format, but I don't think they are comparable. Firstly cricket is overwhelmingly popular in India. Secondly cricket is a team game so you can sell teams vs teams, it's less reliant (though still requires some) on star power, this relies completely on the individuals playing it because tennis is primarily an individual sport. Finally the IPL is taken semi-seriously by the players. This just isn't going to be taken serious. How can anyone take it serious when the matches are first to 5 games no-ad scoring?

Read these and you will see how it's even murkier: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/tennis/andymurray/10671811/Andy-Murray-signs-for-Bangkok-as-Premier-Tennis-League-prepares-for-take-off.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/tennis/10673682/Andre-Agassi-will-refuse-to-play-in-International-Premier-Tennis-League-if-it-clashes-with-Thanksgiving.html

If this runs at all it will run for 2-3 years imo before it's disbanded. Some top names will make some big money off of it but there is just no long term viability to it.

 

[GameSetAndMath]

Most important reason, why IPTL will not take off is that it is just an exhibition tournament
and will be treated so by the players.

IPL Cricket was successful because it was taken seriously by all the teams and is
a real competition. There is prestige involved in winning it apart from money.

My guess is IPTl will run for 2/3 years and then die out.

Three weeks is a serious committment to ask of top players year after year.
This year being the first time, many of them agreed. I think, the coffers will dry
up next time. Then slowly top players will drop off from the event. IPTL will
continue to run with second grade players for another one or two years.
When that happens, there will not be any audience etc. Revenue will be less
and eventually IPTL will become history in about 3/4 years.

Mahesh Bhupathi's and Boris Becker's retirement account will flourish though
during the period this is active.

 

[Rose]

I hate to be so negative, but I think this is a useless non-event that is only about the money and makes a tennis calender that is already bursting at the seams as it is even more overloaded. Only good thing about it is that it won't last.

And aren't these the tennis players that have complained over and over that they don't get enough time off :huh: And also how many more injuries will this cost these players?

 

[ozza]

And aren't these the tennis players that have complained over and over that they don't get enough time off :huh: And also how many more injuries will this cost these players?

Playing in this is probably easier than a day in your off season. The top players are allegedly only playing the home ties. So it's 3 nights of playing 1 first to 5 games no-ad scoring set probably at half pace.

Most players play some kind of exhibitions in the off season. If this is just a replacement for those, then it's probably easier than your average exhibition.

 

[Rose]

And aren't these the tennis players that have complained over and over that they don't get enough time off :huh: And also how many more injuries will this cost these players?

Playing in this is probably easier than a day in your off season. The top players are allegedly only playing the home ties. So it's 3 nights of playing 1 first to 5 games no-ad scoring set probably at half pace.

Most players play some kind of exhibitions in the off season. If this is just a replacement for those, then it's probably easier than your average exhibition.

It now sounds like a higher priced "World Team Tennis" to me and I still say :nono

 

[GameSetAndMath]

And aren't these the tennis players that have complained over and over that they don't get enough time off :huh: And also how many more injuries will this cost these players?

Playing in this is probably easier than a day in your off season. The top players are allegedly only playing the home ties. So it's 3 nights of playing 1 first to 5 games no-ad scoring set probably at half pace.

Most players play some kind of exhibitions in the off season. If this is just a replacement for those, then it's probably easier than your average exhibition.

These being stupid exhibitions, the actual tennis will not really be tiring for the players.
Actually, they are just playing 1 set in each match.

But, the commitment to travel to some far away places and to lose almost all you
off season seems too much for most. Even the retired players like Andre have already
started complaining that they cannot be out there for three weeks.

 

[ozza]

And aren't these the tennis players that have complained over and over that they don't get enough time off :huh: And also how many more injuries will this cost these players?

Playing in this is probably easier than a day in your off season. The top players are allegedly only playing the home ties. So it's 3 nights of playing 1 first to 5 games no-ad scoring set probably at half pace.

Most players play some kind of exhibitions in the off season. If this is just a replacement for those, then it's probably easier than your average exhibition.

It now sounds like a higher priced "World Team Tennis" to me and I still say :nono

This is exactly what I think it is. Something I don't really get is they are selling this whole idea as innovative. But it's not innovative at all as far as I can see, it's just a slightly modified World Team Tennis backed by a truck load of money.

I'm in the camp that I think this will last a few years before the money dries up. The problem is tennis fans will shun this type of format. And they talk about the market for this? But is there really a market for this. A lot of the matches simply won't be interesting to a wide audience as they won't involve marquee names.

The way the papers are talking right now we won't even get the marquee match ups. As they seem to think the "icon" players are only going to play the home ties, which means they won't play each other, which will make it all a bit pointless really.

In World Team Tennis most the teams are losing money. Yes they don't have the star power, but they have a lot of big names over the years (especially when a lot of the big names were US based), and the format hasn't taken off there. This has more hype, more money backing it, but I still don't see it taking off.