Today's Edition
KUUMAR SHYAM (ABU DHABI)
Portia Archer has been working hard to help the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) Tour grow at a faster pace since she took over as Chief Executive Officer seven months ago. She spoke to Aletihad on the sidelines of the final of the Mubadala Abu Dhabi Open as she travels to the Middle East, a region which has been investing heavily into women's tennis among other sports. Here are some excerpts:
You have been here for a few days now. What's your take on the Mubadala Abu Dhabi Open?
Oh, it's been fantastic. This is my first opportunity to visit this particular event. It's a relatively new event on the WTA calendar. They've made improvements from what I understand every year.
It's a first-rate WTA 500 event, and it's beginning to set a standard for other WTA 500 events.
What is the one differentiator thing here that strikes out to you the most compared to all other events happening around the world, especially those with a fairly new experience to staging like Abu Dhabi?
Well, I think every tournament has its own sort of unique flavour and texture and characteristics. What I find interesting here and worth celebrating is that it's very distinct in its presentation. It really does showcase the flavour of the Middle East. There's art, there's music, there's history. All that is sort of woven into the fabric of the event, which I think is quite nice.
The other thing that stands out is that I think this event does an exceptional job in community engagement and development. They have the Community Cup, which engages young people and others all around the UAE.
In part, it will help create the next generation of stars from this region. It engages the community in healthy sport, healthy lifestyle, and beginning to learn more about and hopefully love tennis.
I think this tournament, called Road to Mubadala Open, reaches tens of thousands of community members across the UAE. I believe they have 3,500 participants this year, which is more than double what they had last year.
Before the WTA, you were also part of the NBA [in business development], and Abu Dhabi has been part of the recent plans for both NBA and WTA. What are your key takeaways?
This is an exciting market. There's a lot of opportunity and growth potential. The NBA obviously saw that as well with its global games being hosted here for three years now.
The Middle East has a very young population, a very social, forward, mobile-first community and population. And so that's quite attractive for many sports organisations. It's certainly attractive for tennis and for the WTA. And we embrace that opportunity, and the curiosity that the region has in sport.
The sporting kind of environment and culture is relatively new. And so it's good to be a part of kind of a new frontier, if you will.
The desert swing of tennis events in Abu Dhabi and Dubai are split by another in Doha. Could the UAE events not be held back-to-back for ease of logistics and also maybe save on some carbon footprint?
It's an interesting question. Every year the calendar for the Hologic WTA tour is like fitting together the pieces of a puzzle. I think if you ask the tournament operators, and if they were asked to do a back-to-back tournament, I don't know that they would think it's logistically easier. But there are a lot of pieces that go into developing the calendar – like a puzzle.
Part of it is the carbon footprint. Part of it is fitting together our schedule of events that are back to back with our colleagues in the ATP, the men's tour. And so sometimes we have to sort of give and take around being able to fit all of those pieces together comfortably. At the moment there other sort of factors we have to layer into the calendar presents itself the way it does. And Doha is just an hour away, right?
More and more players are benefiting from maternity leave rules, which have also evolved slightly more; yet some players think more needs to be done. Can you share with us the latest on that?
Sure. I mean, there's always more we can do. And we are in very active conversations with our players and listen to their feedback. They have direct input into our thinking and into the outcomes.
At the same time, we're very proud of what we do offer in this area. I mean, we have benefits and services that range from special ranking for those who are out on maternity and upon their return. There are a series of kind of postpartum benefits that are available to our players.
Some include areas of physical health, but also areas of mental health to support the mothers and parents as they come back on to the tour; child care services are available.
The benefits are important and valuable to our players. There's certainly more that we can do, and we're thinking through some alternatives and options. So there'll be more on that to come as we work through the details of that. But we're proud of what we've done.
