The lease for the Serbia Open is up this year and efforts to keep it in the Serbia have failed as Budapest will take over next year.
The event was leased for a couple of years but it's returning to Hungary because its owner wants it back. Novak Djokovic confirmed recently that many efforts were made by the country to keep its tennis event but it failed as they couldn't convince Tiriac to sell it.
First of all, I must say that the licence is not ours. We leased it from its owner Ion Tiriac and now he wants it back. We wanted to buy the licence, to host the tournament in Serbia for many years to come, because we were successful – many people in the stands, ATP gave us excellent grades for all the efforts, but there is not much we can do when the owner doesn’t want to sell the licence. We have to respect that.
Djokovic confirmed that he's going to work to bring tennis back to Serbia as the desire to have an event in the country is very high. There are not many ways they can obtain a license for an event but he's willing to explore all of them.
We are now looking into two different alternatives to get the licence. Either to apply with the ATP for the new licence – which is less likely because there are many tournaments as it is – or to negotiate a lease on another licence. Possibly to even buy that licence, but the prices have gone through the roof and most tournaments are profitable, so it is understandable that they don’t want to sell. Our desire is big, so we will see.
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