British Tennis Forum - Celebrating 20 Years!

JonH wrote:

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I also wonder what the sponsors think or have to say in this. My feeling is corporate sponsors would expect a say in it, surely - the whole point is to promote your business and you want to make sure the optics are correct. I would have thought HSBC would be a little concerned on this, even if (in the round) they had signed off on the priority to Brits policy. I would imagine (or hoped) their Corporate Sponsorhip VP or whatever would have asked for their views to be taken into account.

Maybe they have been.

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 They won't give a toss. HSBC don't care about all the endless scandals and links to the Chinese government, things that are actually serious and relevant to business reputation, so they aren't going to care a out who does or doesn't get a wildcard into a sports event, and no, they wouldn't have any involvement in these decisions. It's different when you have agencies who effectively own a tournament ensuring their players get a wildcard. HSBC sponsor dozens and dozens of sports, music, cultural events every year all across the globe. The only people concerned are a couple of dozen massively invested tennis fans on some message boards, 99.9% of whom aren't even going to the event. It's hardly some sort of massive outrage leading to any impact on ticket sales (which wouldn't impact HSBC anyway).

People are massively overthinking this from a commercial/business standpoint. You think Stella Artois used to be panicking about whether Arvind Parmar was the right choice for yet another wildcard?

Edit - apologies for putting the wildcards in the wrong weekly thread, wasn't paying attention!

I care and personally never mentioned the sponsors, other than pleased that CD waa stirring it with them ( but about whom Paul is probably largely correct ). I just believe it to be a wrong WC decision.

Anyway, just on who has been awarded the WCs, out of interest does anyone else here, other than ricardo89 and wolf, believe that all 4 should have gone to the Brits with the effect that Tatjana, a popular defending champion and still ranked just outside the existing DEs, was overlooked? Most folk who have commented here think otherwise and interesting too if there are others with that opinion.

I noted in amongst Paul's other push backs that he for one said that he would like them to use one for Maria ( although he thought that by now she would have moved into the MD ).

indiana wrote:

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Anyway, just on who has been awarded the WCs, out of interest does anyone else here, other than ricardo89 and wolf, believe that all 4 should have gone to the Brits with the effect that Tatjana, a popular defending champion and still ranked just outside the existing DEs, was overlooked? Most folk who have commented here think otherwise and interesting too if there are others with that opinion.

I noted in amongst Paul's other push backs that he for one said that he would like them to use one for Maria ( although he thought that by now she would have moved into the MD ).

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I'm in two minds. One the one hand, I interviewed Tatiana and her husband back in 2018 for a story while I was still covering the tour, and they were absolutely lovely - none of the ego associated with some players, and good storytellers. And love Tatiana's game so I was delighted to see her do so well last year. I certainly wouldn't have begrudged her a WC.

But as a British tennis fan who's bought tickets, I'd definitely rather watch Katie/Fran/Harriet/Mika in action, and see how they fare against the game's elite. There will also be more of an atmosphere for British matches. So while I'm preparing my hard hat (as I know most of the forum disagrees with me), I'm quite happy with how the WCs have gone