Tomas Petera, the Ostrava Open WTA 500 event organizer, revealed shocking changes coming to women's tennis in 2024.
The WTA calendar for the 2024 season remains shrouded in uncertainty as new changes should be announced. With tournaments staged in China returning to the calendar, finding a new date for the Ostrava event appears increasingly challenging. Tomas Petera, who has successfully organized the WTA 500 category event in Ostrava since 2020, now questions the event's continuity.
The recent return of the women's tennis tour to China, despite the Shuai Peng case, signals the financial pressures on the WTA. As Petera explained in a conversation with Tenisportal, the decision had to be made.
"I think the people in management had no choice. It's about money and the WTA doesn't have it, so they decided to come back, even though they look like fools given the events that happened."
However, the more alarming revelation comes from Petera's statement about the complete restructuring of tournaments from 2024. He claims that WTA 250 tournaments won't be available for the Top 30 players, resulting in even greater exclusivity of WTA 500 events.
"The situation now is that there will be a complete restructuring of the tournaments from 2024. Today's WTA 250s will become worthless tournaments, because tennis players from the Top 30 in the WTA ranking will not be able to play in them."
Petera predicts that a fight will start between tournament organizers to secure a new license for their event, as it will be much more difficult to attract large crowds to WTA 250 events if the rules that he mentioned earlier will apply.
"The fight will begin over who will be allowed by the organization to upgrade the tournament from WTA 250 to WTA 500. Of course, the tournaments will have to pay for it. It will probably be clear about who will succeed at the end of April. And then a tournament calendar for the next year will begin to emerge."
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