WTA returns to China and lifts tournament suspension

The WTA will resume hosting tournaments in China later this year, after events there were suspended at the end of 2021 due to concerns over Chinese player Peng Shuai.

The return, which was announced on Thursday, is also a retreat.

When Peng, one of China’s top tennis stars, accused a former top Chinese official of sexual assault in a social media post in November 2021, the WTA and Steve Simon, its chairman and CEO, took a strong stand.

The WTA called for a “full and transparent” investigation into Peng’s allegations, which were quickly censored online in China, and requested an opportunity to speak with her directly. The following month, the WTA suspended its Chinese tournaments and announced that the tour would not return until its demands were met.

Sixteen months later, faced with a stalemate, the WTA has effectively blinked.

“We are currently convinced that the requests we have submitted will not be granted,” Simon said in an interview this week. “And with that, continuing with the same strategy doesn’t seem logical and we need a different approach. Our members feel it is time to resume our mission in China, where we believe we can continue to make a positive difference, as I think we have done for the last 20 years when we were there, while at the same time ensuring that Peng is not forgotten and that by returning we can make some progress.”

The suspension of Chinese tournaments by the WTA was more symbolic than substantive. China canceled nearly all international sporting events in 2021 and 2022 in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Even without the WTA suspension, there would almost certainly have been no tour events in the country in 2022. But in a landscape where global sports leaders have often given in to China and its economic clout, the WTA’s 2021 move still sent a strong signal. .

“It was very inspiring to the human rights community at the time, and it is now extremely disappointing to see the WTA basically behaving like everyone else,” Yaqiu Wang, a senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch, said Thursday. “It’s really a victory for the Chinese government.”

The WTA was an outlier of China. Not even the men’s tennis tour, the ATP, followed suit and has never suspended any of its Chinese events, including the Masters 1000 tournament in Shanghai. With Chinese authorities lifting their pandemic-related restrictions, it is scheduled to be played this year for the first time since 2019.

“The reality is we were the only ones doing it,” Simon said. “That’s not a problem. We didn’t necessarily ask the world to join us. Everyone has to make their own decisions. I believe in that very strongly. But I do think it definitely makes a difference and that’s probably the reason why we are in the situation we are in and we adapt.”

Over the years, China has become a more important market for the WTA than for the ATP. The women’s tour found nine events in China in 2019, accounting for about a third of the WTA’s annual revenue. Chief among those tournaments was the season-ending WTA Finals in Shenzhen, which netted $14 million in prize money in 2019, the first year of a lucrative 10-year deal.

The tour, which relied heavily on revenue from the WTA Finals, took a major financial hit when the event was canceled in 2020 and then moved to Guadalajara, Mexico, in 2021 and to Fort Worth in 2022. In Guadalajara and Fort Worth, the WTA had to pay for the significantly lower prize money, $5 million, himself.

Simon said the tour would resume in China in September. While the schedule is not yet complete, he said he expects eight tournaments to be held this year: regular tour events in Zhengzhou, Beijing, Guangzhou, Nanchang, Hong Kong and Wuhan; the WTA Elite Trophy in Zhuhai; and the final, which Simon indicated would be held in Shenzhen until 2031 to fulfill the original 10-year commitment.

Simon said several of the events outside of China that filled the gap at the end of the season in 2022 would remain on the tour’s fall schedule this year, including tournaments in San Diego, Guadalajara and also in Tunisia.

The WTA has faced major financial headwinds since the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, with overall prize money falling even further behind the men’s tour. Last month, the WTA announced a commercial partnership with CVC Capital Partners, a global private equity firm, which will make a $150 million investment in the tour.

The return to China will further bolster the WTA’s finances, but Simon dismissed suggestions that the decision was about the bottom line.

“This decision was not made in any way based on the Finale deal,” said Simon. “It was based on what was in the best interest of the organization, and we felt it was in that best interest. Will it be good for our balance sheet and things like that, yes it will be, but that was not the basis for the decision.”

Simon said it was also important for women’s sport that women’s tennis has a presence in China, where the game has grown since the success of Li Na, China’s first Grand Slam champion.

Peng disappeared from view for several weeks after she posted her initial allegations on Chinese social media platform Weibo in 2021. She has since reappeared to meet International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach at the Beijing Games in February 2022. She has given interviews to the international news media, claiming she had been misunderstood and had not actually made allegations of sexual assault .

But the WTA continued to question whether it can speak freely. “I don’t know what her current thoughts are,” said Wang of Human Rights Watch. “But for what she’s done, just posting the Weibo post, she’ll never really be free as long as she stays in China.”

While Simon said the WTA had been unable to establish direct contact with Peng, he said the tour had received assurances from “people close to Peng in the area that she is safe and lives with her family in Beijing.”

Despite the public standoff between the WTA and the Chinese government, Simon said officials from the sport’s national governing body had given assurances to the WTA that “our athletes and employees will be safe when they are in China.”

The return to China comes at a time of rising political tensions between China and the West, but other international events, including the track’s Diamond League and the Asian Games, a multi-sport competition, are also returning to the country this year. Simon said the WTA questioned his players prior to the decision.

“Obviously we had some players who didn’t support a return, but the majority said it’s time to go back,” said Simon.

Some tennis officials believed that Simon and the WTA had gone too far in demanding a Chinese investigation into Peng’s allegations as a condition of lifting the suspension. But the WTA also received much praise for its strong stance from human rights organizations and others.

“Eventually they gave in to the pressure,” Wang said. “I am not surprised because of the money at stake. But what happened now makes clear what Human Rights Watch always makes, which is that companies and governments should do it together. If you stand alone against the Chinese government, the costs are high and your influence is small.”

Does Simon feel that the WTA is letting people down now?

“We are proud of the position we have taken,” he said. “If I had to make the decision again, I would have made the same one, there is no doubt about that. We think people understand that we’ve addressed a very difficult issue. We did our best to live up to the results, but unfortunately we were not able to achieve everything we wanted. But we were also able to make sure that Peng is safe and that she is not forgotten or left behind. Things have to evolve. You can’t keep doing the same thing if it doesn’t work.”