You may have seen a tourism advertisement about Saudi Arabia circulating on YouTube and movie screens. The title is: This land is calling. An intrepid Western woman crosses the desert, zigzags through a bustling city and finally comes face to face with a local woman; They exchange a soft smile.
When Coco Gauff won the WTA Finals (and a record £3.7 million prize) on Saturday in Riyadh, the last line of that announcement came to mind: “I was the first, but I won’t be the last.”
The season-ending event featuring the world’s eight best players was the first high-level tennis tournament to be held in the kingdom, but more will follow.
Saudi Arabia already sponsors the men’s and women’s qualifications, and last month awarded a £4.6 million prize to Jannik Sinner for winning the Six Kings exhibition event. Next on the agenda is a Masters tournament in the country, which will be included on the calendar before the Australian Open. An agreement is reportedly close to being reached.
So is all this just another vulgar exchange of cash for the laundering of an atrocious human rights record? Or will the presence of eight of the most famous tennis players on the planet help grow an emerging market for the game and even help create more opportunities for women?
Coco Gauff won the WTA Finals (and a record £3.7 million prize) last Saturday in Riyadh
Gauff clinched WTA Finals title over Zheng Qinwen after three-hour night battle
Gauff has previously been a critical voice of the Kingdom’s human rights record.
Saudi Arabia’s investment in the sport is nothing new, but this was the first time they hosted an elite women’s event. The three-year deal, announced in April, was met with a healthy dose of fury.
Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert co-authored an article that said Saudi Arabia’s values are “completely incompatible with the spirit and purpose of women’s tennis.”
The country ranks 126 out of 146 on the Global Gender Gap Index, a measure of women’s equality.
Mail Sport understands that Human Rights Watch (HRW), the Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization, wrote to the WTA detailing serious concerns about the awarding of the final to Saudi Arabia and the lack of due diligence in the preparation of the event, and has Received no response beyond a basic acknowledgment.
When we raised this with the WTA, they responded: ‘As part of our decision-making process, we engage widely with people and organizations with a variety of different views.
‘We have received assurances from our partners in Saudi Arabia that everyone will be welcome. “We have not experienced any problems.”
The WTA made no attempt to refute HRW’s claims that they do not have a human rights policy, or that they did not investigate whether those building or staffing the tournament hotels were subjected to labor violations: Saudi Arabia operates the same Kafala system which left some 6,500 immigrant workers dead in the construction of the World Cup in Qatar.
For that tournament, the U.S. team spent nearly two years conducting research and ensured that its hotel had not been built or staffed by exploited workers. Pressed on these details, the WTA offered no response.
Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert co-authored an article saying Saudi Arabia’s values are “totally incompatible with the spirit and purpose of women’s tennis.”
Jannik Skinner (centre) won £6.4 million last month for winning the Six Kings exhibition event
There has been progress in Saudi society regarding women’s rights, but it has been painfully slow. Women can now register for a passport and travel independently, but the law still requires them to “obey” their husbands.
Regarding LGBT rights, same-sex relationships are criminalized; The exception, in a cruel attack on the indigenous LGBT community, is for same-sex tourist couples, who since last year have been free to share a hotel room.
This issue became more pertinent for the WTA when Daria Kasatkina, the world number 9 who is gay and travels on the tour with her girlfriend Natalia Zabiiako, qualified as a ‘substitute’, to be there in case of injury.
Kasatkina was initially opposed to the tour traveling to Saudi Arabia, but once the final deal was announced, she became more understanding, saying, “I’ve been given assurances that I’m going to be okay.”
But as Minky Worden, director of Global Initiatives at HRW, told Mail Sport: “These are inalienable rights, and you should not have to get special protection or special guarantees that your rights will not be violated.”
Whatever soft power motivations the state has for investing in tennis, there is an undoubted effort in Saudi Arabia to grow the game at a grassroots level.
There are 177 tennis clubs in the country, an increase of 150 per cent on 2019. The number of players has increased by almost 50 per cent and of the 29,000 children who followed their tennis program last year, half were girls .
Mail Sport spoke to Arij Mutabagani, the director of the Saudi Tennis Federation, who has been playing since she was 12 years old and whose ambitious goal is to introduce one million people to tennis by 2030.
“An event like this is a dream come true,” Mutabagani said of the final. ‘When I was a kid playing tennis, I wish we had something like that. It is a great inspiration for tennis lovers in Saudi Arabia and especially for girls, if they can see their heroes up close. Maybe one of these days we will have a Saudi champion.
‘We have seen a huge increase in women and female participation in Saudi Arabia, especially in tennis. Every day we see more women trying to join us, whether they are players or members of the Federation’s staff. “It has opened up many job opportunities, in sport in general and in tennis in particular.”
The head of the Saudi Tennis Federation of Saudi Arabia, Arij Mutabagani (right), is excited about the growing participation of women in the sport across the Kingdom.
Openly gay player Daria Kasatkina supported the WTA Finals after receiving assurances that she and her partner would be fine to compete in the country.
Members of the WTA player council, such as Jessic Pegula, are aware that they can create a schism in the sport, similar to that caused in golf by the Saudi LIV Tour.
So what do the players think? Jessica Pegula, a member of the WTA players council and one of eight women competing in singles in Riyadh, suggested that they were scared by the gap Saudi Arabia’s LIV Tour had opened up in golf and therefore They were willing to collaborate with the kingdom rather than take risks. a schism in the future.
We understand that players also appreciate that they cannot claim more prize money and then disregard Middle Eastern money.
In the narrow sphere of tennis, gender equality largely means pay parity and that’s what the Saudis have delivered, and then some: Gauff earned around £300,000 more than a man would earn from her Turin results in the ATP final this week.
Only Gauff – 20 years old, the youngest of the eight but also the most politically aware – has expressed his misgivings.
“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have reservations,” Gauff said at the start of the event. ‘I want to see it for myself, see if change is happening. If I felt uncomfortable or felt like nothing was happening, then maybe I wouldn’t come back.”
The champion may be watching briefly, but for the game as a whole it feels like that time has passed. The genie cannot be put back in the bottle.
Sport and Saudi Arabia are in this together now, for better or worse. This land is calling and tennis is listening.
