Thanks Steven, yes there are lots of companies that offer internal competition organisation on behalf of companies, such as those links you have included. But none of them, from what I see, offer external competition, so HSBC vs RBS, rather than an internal tournament just for HSBC employees.
I doubt the German tennis club network is sufficiently different to the French tennis club network, in that one country has a huge demand for corporate tennis (evidenced by the French having a Corporate Tennis President in each area, equivalent in size to UK counties) and one does not. I wouldn't be surprised if there is untapped demand for corporate tennis all over the continent, just like there was in London. The reason I was thinking of more than Paris/France initially, is that the costs of organising and hiring courts for 4 teams/countries wouldn't be that much more than for a GB/France final...and the former, would slightly more legitimately allow you to claim Champions of Europe status! However I'm not entirely sure how any of this would be financed...
Very early days but pleased to say I've managed to speak to Michael Berrer (CH 42) about starting this in Germany and he was very interested...Porsche vs Volkswagen vs Bosch. He too couldn't believe it doesn't already exist in the European country with most tennis members and most large companies! I also have had some brief emails with Juan Carlos Ferrero (CH 1) about starting in Spain and he also sounded very positive. Great to see these former pros take a real interest in tennis development.
Some great new companies including British Telecom, Coutts, GlaxoSmithKline and Santander. 8 seeded teams per event get a bye into the knockout rounds this year, to avoid one sided round robin matches.
I played a guy called Lewis Barnes this week, I was playing for GlaxoSmithKline and he was playing for CapGemini. He absolutely smashed me and was telling me afterwards about his story, won the junior davis cup with dan evans and dan cox:
The Corporate Tennis finals were held a couple of weeks ago. With a strong BlackOut Technologies team scraping passed Two Circles (who provide data analytics to the LTA and Wimbledon) in the semis before beating last year's champions Gartner in the final. The mixed was won by Barclays for the second year in a row, this time beating Lloyds of London in a nail biter.
I'm actually due to sell the competition to a tennis holiday company next week. So considering what next tennis participation project to spend the money on, any suggestions welcome.