Qatar Airways Becomes Title Sponsor Of Sofia’s Tournament of Champions

Written by: Staff on 5th October 2012

Qatar Airways Becomes Title Sponsor Of Sofia’s Tournament of Champions

epa03379417 Maria Kirilenko of Russia serves to Andrea Hlavackova of the Czech Republic during their match on the sixth day of the 2012 US Open Tennis Championship at the USTA National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, New York, USA, 01 September 2012. The US Open runs through Sunday 09 September 2012. EPA/JUSTIN LANE |

The WTA welcomed the announcement by the Bulgarian Tennis Federation (BTF) that Qatar Airways would be the title sponsor for the forthcoming Tournament of Champions, to be held at Arena Armeec in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia from October 30–November 4, 2012. Under the terms of the one-year deal, the event will officially be known as the Qatar Airways Tournament of Champions Sofia.

“We are thrilled that Qatar Airways has signed up as title sponsor of the Tournament of Champions,” said WTA Chairman & CEO Stacey Allaster. “Qatar Airways is a truly world class airline with a wonderful history of support for professional tennis, including the Qatar Ladies Open, our WTA Premier event in Doha . I congratulate the Bulgarian Tennis Federation for securing such a premium partner for the first staging of this event in Sofia .”

This week tournament organizers also announced that Russian star Maria Kirilenko would receive the second available wild card into the eight-woman contest, joining home-grown favorite Tsvetana Pironkova, who enjoys one of the highest profiles of any Bulgarian athlete and whose wild card was allocated earlier in the year.

Offering total prize money of $750,000, the Qatar Airways Tournament of Champions is the final event on the 2012 WTA calendar. The tournament brings together the six highest-ranked winners of International series events through the year (not including those who qualify for the TEB BNP Paribas WTA Championships in Istanbul), plus two wildcards, initially split into two groups for a round robin competition feeding into the semifinals and final.

The complete starting line-up will not be announced until after the final International tournament of the year, the BGL BNP Paribas Luxembourg Open (October 15-21). Sofia is set to host the tournament from 2012-2014 after three successful years in Bali , where the title was won by Aravane Rezai (2009) and Ana Ivanovic (2010 and 2011).

©Daily Tennis News Wire

Topics: Bulgarian tennis federation, Maria Kirilenko, Qatar Airways tennis news, Tennis tournaments of champions, Tsvetana Pironkova, Wta