Stockholm And Vienna Recruiting Better Than Kremlin Cup

Written by: Staff on 18th October 2012

Stockholm And Vienna Recruiting Better Than Kremlin Cup

epa03437478 Alexandr Dolgopolov of Ukraine returns the ball to Edouard Roger-Vasselin of France during their second round match at the Kremlin Cup tennis tournament in Moscow, Russia, 18 October 2012. EPA/SERGEI ILNITSKY |

A lack of overall sponsorships for the Kremlin Cup has the tournament unable to pay out healthy enough appearance fees to attract top male players.

The ATP 250, which has had standout fields in the past, was only been able to draw seven top-50 players for the $670,000 event. The top seed is No. 20 Alexander Dolgopolov. While Moscow does have Hitachi as a sponsor, it’s likely that the Japanese technology company is not paying enough to allow the tournament to cover prize money, general expenses and appearance fees, which for top 10 players usually run $100,000 minimum and for top 4 players can run from $500,000 to $1 million.

Two other on-going tournaments, Vienna and Stockholm are in better shape. Vienna is sponsored by Erset Bank and has two other big sponsors in the Vienna Insurance Group and Novomatic. The tournament features two top 10 players in Juan Martin Del Potro and Janko Tipsarevic.

Stockholm has the title sponsor “If Metal”, and four other presenting sponsors including Eurocard. It attracted three top 12 players in Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Tomas Berdych and Nicolas Almagro.

Shamil Tarpishchev, the head of the Russian Tennis Federation who helps runs the Kremlin Cup, said things are looking up for 2013.

“The list of players does not probably comply with the Kremlin Cup brand, but it is even,” he said. “We have agreement with the Bank of Moscow about the attraction of the strongest players for the next year.”

The WTA Kremlin Cup is doing better as features two top 10 players in Samantha Stosur and Marion Bartoli as well as former Nos. 1 Caroline Wozniacki and Ana Ivanovic, plus a host of Russian players such as Nadia Petrova and Maria Kirilenko. But even the women’s event isn’t as strong as it used to be when it consistently drew top 5 players. Now played the week before the WTA Championships, it has no member of the eight players who have qualified for Istanbul.

But Tarpishchev seems satisfied. “The women’s draw is very good this year,” he said. “These are 12 players from the top 30, it is a solid tournament.”

Topics: Kremlin Cup, Russian tennis news., Stockholm tennis news, Vienna tennis news