The women’s tennis tour is reportedly looking to move the WTA Finals to Charlotte in a multi-year deal. The season-ending championships has not found a long-term host city since their deal with China fell apart. There has been increasing speculation that the WTA will be taking the Finals to Saudi Arabia, something that has sparked backlash with Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert claiming it would be a “step backward”.
The WTA Finals has been finding temporary host venues for the last few years, despite signing a 10-year deal to stage the event in Shenzhen from 2019. The Covid pandemic and the disappearance of Peng Shuai led to a breakdown of the agreement, and the tournament has since been staged in Guadalajara, Fort Worth and Cancun.
The decision to hold the 2023 edition of the tournament in Cancun was announced with less than two months’ notice following reports that the Finals were going to be moving to Saudi Arabia. The women’s tennis tour is still expected to be considering a move to Riyadh, but they are now exploring new options further down the line, including heading back to America.
According to the Charlotte Business Journal, the WTA is considering moving the tournament to Charlotte for “multiple years beginning in 2027.” The tour reportedly considered Charlotte’s Spectrum Center as a potential host venue for this year’s Finals and they have still “not selected a site for the 2024 WTA Finals.
When the WTA lands on a city for this year’s Finals, they are expected to sign a three-year deal from 2024 to 2026. This is why Charlotte will be a likely option from 2027 onwards. The Spectrum Center will be more appealing in three years, as it is set to undergo £170 million ($215 million) worth of renovations in 2025.
It still leaves uncertainty over where the year-end championships will be staged in 2024 as the tour faces pushback over the possibility of going to Saudi Arabia. In a joint opinion piece in the Washington Post, Evert and Navratilova claimed the proposal is “entirely incompatible with the spirit and purpose of women’s tennis and the WTA itself.
They added: “The WTA should revisit the values upon which it was established. We believe that those values cannot even be expressed, much less achieved, in Saudi Arabia. Taking a tournament there would represent a significant step backward, to the detriment not just of women’s sport, but women. We hope this changes someday, hopefully within the next five years. If so, we would endorse engagement there.”
It remains to be seen where the prestigious top-eight tournament is staged in 2024. But the WTA may avoid the hassle of finding more last-minute venues if they can sign a deal with Charlotte from 2027 onward.
