World number one Caroline Wozniacki and other top women's players will not be on show in the city in January after lack of government funds and failure to find a commercial sponsor forced the organisers of the Hong Kong Tennis Classic to postpone the tournament.
'Over the last eight months, we have undertaken a strenuous title sponsorship search, but to date we have been unable to secure a sponsor. This has forced us to postpone the event in January,' said Ian Wade, president of the Hong Kong Tennis Patrons' Association (TPA). 'As we are already in October, we know players will now have committed to other tournaments and, sadly, there is no alternative but to postpone the event. In today's financial environment, finding a sponsor has been difficult, and this has proven to be the case.'
The Hong Kong Classic had received money from the government's Mega Events Fund for the past two tournaments. It received HK$9 million last year.
For this year's event in January, that sum was reduced to HK$5 million, forcing the TPA to dip into its own reserves as there was no title sponsor.
'We need around HK$10 million to stage the tournament every year with most of this going on paying appearance fees for the players. This year we went ahead after we dipped into our reserves. But we decided we could not continue to do that for 2012,' said Terry Catton, co-director of the tournament.
Attempts to find a title sponsor are continuing as organisers now look at holding the event at Victoria Park in September or October next year.
'While it is very sad that we cannot hold it in January, we are now exploring the possibility of having it later in the year. Both the ATP [men's tour] and WTA [women's tour] have their Asian swings around September/October and these would be the best dates to hold our event,' Catton said.