The traditional sport was supposed to be spectacularly revived with a new tournament series. Disillusionment has long since set in. In Frankfurt too, the crisis can only be covered up to a limited extent.
Timo Boll caught it straight away. The bitter end came before the WTT Champions tournament in Frankfurt had even really started. The German table tennis legend needs two things above all to have a chance at another Olympics: match practice and world ranking points. But that is exactly a problem.
“Of course I would like to play more tournaments to find my rhythm”said the 42-year-old Boll, “but there aren’t any more this year.” So no tournaments in November and December, after another table tennis season marked by large gaps in the calendar, many cancellations and spontaneous postponements – the professionals were promised something completely different three years ago.
Pale copy instead of great success
The Australian Stephen Duckitt announced nothing less than the big table tennis revolution. As the new event director created in 2019 World Table Tennisseries (WTT), he presented his vision in bright colors of how professional table tennis could be spectacularly transformed and turned into a lucrative business.
But Duckitt’s big shot quickly looked like a pale copy. Because he had used his 15 years of PR experience on the tennis tour and simply replaced the large, yellow felt ball with the small, white plastic ball. Designing a table tennis tournament calendar like the one found in professional tennis – that was Duckitt’s visionary plan for the rebirth of this traditional sport.
Big gaps in Tournament calendar
“We want Grand Smashes establish”Duckitt announced back in the summer of 2020, “like the four of them Grand Slams with Wimbledon in tennis. We will build a mix of top tournaments around them.” Three years later, one thing in particular remains of the great vision: great frustration among players, associations and the European leagues.
Because unlike tennis professionals, it is still not possible for them to play for world ranking points and prize money week after week. In 2022, the WTT only offered 14 tournaments, a further eleven as so-called feeder tournaments for players beyond the top 100. This season the calendar was just as thin. So far there has only been one Grand Smash per season, only two in total.
WTT only goes solo
The table tennis professionals also have no planning security; at the beginning of the year the calendar was always largely empty. Over the course of the season, tournaments are repeatedly canceled at short notice, while others are added spontaneously. This also causes anger in the European leagues, because there are no agreements with them. WTT does what it wants.
The German Table Tennis Bundesliga (TTBL) can also only react angrily with its own postponements. At the moment she has to take a five-week break until the end of November because of WTT tournaments for the top stars that were postponed at short notice. For many professionals, however, the leagues are an important financial and sporting mainstay. On the other hand, they are a thorn in the side of the WTT; they want to bind the professionals exclusively to them with contracts. At least with non-Asian players so far without much success.
“As a player, I don’t have enough power to change anything”
Because many table tennis professionals feel little respect from the WTT. They are informed about changes to the calendar via an internal chat group, but the reply function is deactivated. An exchange with the players is not wanted, which is also reminiscent of the strategies of the tennis tour. Hardly any player wants to express criticism publicly, the pressure from the WTT is great. However, the anger behind closed doors is even greater.
European champion Dang Qiu: “In the end, as a player, I don’t have enough power to change anything.”
European champion Dang Qiu sounded very clear in Frankfurt: “When a tournament takes place, it’s really good. But it doesn’t take place as often as promised. Sometimes it takes place too spontaneously.” And the German international added slightly resignedly: “In the end, as a player, I don’t have enough power to change anything.”
There will be a full one in 2024 Tournament calendar?
Despite a newly founded players’ union, it is impossible to build collective pressure against the WTT. The stars from China are not going along – whether of their own free will or by force. But the tour is completely geared towards them, the rest of the world is basically just an accessory. And so the latest notification in the WTT chat group this week caused more skepticism than enthusiasm among the professionals: there will be a full tournament calendar in 2024. And they want to pull off three Grand Smashes before the Olympics in August.
This extremely ambitious project alone caused many professionals to shake their heads. Most people assume that the alleged XXL tournament plan, which will not be announced for them until the beginning of November, will not last and will be thinned out again with many cancellations.
WTT’s profits have tripled
The fact that so far only countries like China, Qatar, Oman or Hungary have wanted to organize WTT tournaments is due to the strict requirements in the contracts that they have to enter into. You are forced to pay a hefty fee – part of it goes into the prize money, the rest goes to the WTT. The prize money for the players has tripled from 1.8 million to 6.3 million US dollars in 2022, but there are hardly any organizers for this. Because above all, the WTT deserves it.
On this point, Duckitt has delivered with WTT boss Liu Guoliang, the former Chinese table tennis professional: The profit was tripled within a year (28.9 million US dollars), according to the WTT annual report for 2022. But since Even though expenses through investments doubled to $31.2 million, the balance sheet is in the red. That was planned that way. “We will be making money from 2025,” promises Michael Brown, the financial director of the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF), of which the WTT is a subsidiary.
Table tennis and tennis are still light years apart
In Frankfurt, the best 32 women and men are now gathered for the first time in Germany for the 5th Champions Tournament. Similar to a Masters in tennis, both award 1,000 world ranking points. With the subtle difference that a top tennis star like Rafael Nadal would never have competed in Frankfurt for a winner’s check of just $30,000 (out of a total prize money of $500,000). He would get that for a second round exit at a Masters, but for the title he would get 1.2 million euros. The two sports are still light years apart.
President Claudia Herweg does not expect that the German Table Tennis Association (DTTB) will earn anything from the Champions Tournament this year. This time it will be mixed financing from WTT and core sponsors, Herweg told the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”. The DTTB did not want to reveal exactly how the shares of the taxes paid to the WTT are made up. After the clear criticism of the WTT’s founding on its own – for which the association publicly apologized – efforts are now being made to smooth things over. Nevertheless, Herweg emphasized at least something in the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” that would certainly meet with broad approval among the players: “The ITTF is tasked with setting the calendar from top to bottom. The fact that the calendar for 2024 has not yet been published two months before the start of the year is not good.”