Bad News for Women’s Tennis: WTA Tour still with sponsorship deal

Bad News for Women’s Tennis: WTA Tour still with sponsorship deal

Not all is good news for the WTA Women’s Tennis Tour… The WTA still has no sponsorship deal to replace the Sony Ericsson deal if the phone company decides not to renew their contract…

Sony Ericsson has sponsored the women’s Tour since 2005. The deal was worth $88 million for a 6 year period but the deadline for renewing its partnership is almost here.

“The deadline to respond to the renewal is the end of this year. We still have a little bit of time left. I can certainly confirm we are looking at it very carefully. We are looking at our sponsorship seriously. We haven’t made any decision yet, and all options are open. We will announce the decision alongside our partner at the appropriate time. That’s all that I can say today because as of today we’ve not made any decision.” Aldo Liguori, Sony Ericsson’s corporate vice-president and head of global communications, said.

Stacey Allaster, the chairman and chief executive of the WTA, said 2009 had been a good year for women’s tennis.

“We’ve had good attendance. We’ve actually had an 11 percent increase in attendance for our premier events, which we think is fantastic, particularly when you look at how other events and leagues have done in 2009. We know how tough it’s been. But prize money increased 34 percent and we had over $750 million of new stadiums open. All of that in a challenging economy.”

So we will see what happended at the end of 2009 and if the Sony Ericsson women’s tour chances it’s name after 2010…