Nadal, Djokovic, Serena: The stars are in for International Premier Tennis League

Novak Djokovic of Serbia is one of the team members for the UAE Royals, one of four teams in the International Premier Tennis League. Pavel Golovkin / AP photo

DUBAI // With "Break the Code" as their motto, the International Premier Tennis League (IPTL) is hoping to follow the path of cricket's Indian Premier League (IPL) and bring about a revolution in their sport.

Having attracted a mix of current stars and legends such as Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray, Serena Williams, Ana Ivanovic, Victoria Azarenka, Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi and Martina Hingis, the IPTL is, like the IPL, seeking to take tennis to a wider audience through a new format and a heavy dose of entertainment.

“We want to break away from the traditional etiquettes of tennis to attract a new audience to the sport,” Mahesh Bhupathi, the founder and managing director of the IPTL, said on Tuesday.

Bhupathi and his team have come up with a format that will see the four franchise-owned teams – Manila Mavericks, Singapore Slammers, Indian Aces and UAE Royals – battle across four nations for the prize purse of US$1 million (Dh3.67m).

Starting in the Philippines on November 28, the teams will face each other at every venue, with each tie consisting of five single-set matches – men’s singles, women’s singles, men’s doubles, mixed doubles and past champions singles.

Every time a player wins a game in a match, their team will get one point. The team that wins the most games at the end of the five matches wins the tie.

Among other innovations, each team can call a power point, once in each match, which means the next point played will count as double. If the set is tied at 5-5, there will be a seven-point shoot-out.

“We have changed the traditional scoring format to speed up the games and allow us to expose up to 24 different players in one evening,” Bhupathi said. “On the broadcasting side, they will, for the first time, be able to schedule predictable starting and finish times of each match.

“I think we do have a problem vis-à-vis tennis. If you look at TV broadcasts, we cannot control the time of a match and, the way the Tour is structured, change can never happen because it is owned by the players and the tournaments.

“So, here we are going to show them something different and it may change everyone’s mindset. It was time for innovations in tennis and, similar to what the IPL has done in cricket, I imagine the IPTL will for tennis. “I think the world is moving towards a lot of short-format content when it comes to sport and we are trying to pick up that trend. So fingers crossed.”

The fourth and final round of the IPTL will be held in Dubai from December 11-13 at the Hamdan Sports Complex and officials from Tennis Emirates and the Dubai Sports Council were really excited about the event.

“Congratulations to the IPTL for conceptualising such a unique sports product and the Dubai Sports Council is proud to partner with the organisers to make this a great success,” Dr Ahmed Sharif, the general secretary of the Dubai Sports Council, said at the news conference where the Dubai Royals team owners – Sachin Gadoya, Sawan Ravani, Rahul Saharia, Kaushal Majithia, Chirag Vora and Kunal Bansal – were present.

Abdulrahman Falaknaz, the vice-president of Tennis Emirates, said he thought the tournament could spur participation in tennis in the UAE.

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