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G.O.A.T.
Tennis poised for new Majesty Cup tournament with winner takes all pot of £7.5m prize money
As the second edition of the Laver Cup begins on Friday in Chicago, tennis’s warring administrators have come up with yet another format: a 64-man, winner-takes-all event that goes under the working title of the Majesty Cup.
The new idea is technically an exhibition and would be staged in the week after the US Open. But the eye-catching detail is the proposed prize money of $10 million (£7.5 million), which is to be supplied by Gerard Pique’s iconoclastic investment group, Kosmos.
For purposes of comparison, that is about $2 million more than the entire purse at an ATP Masters 1000 event – the next-most-prestigious category of tournament after a grand slam. But whereas a Masters tournament follows a carefully delineated pay structure, in accordance with ATP rules, the twist of the Majesty Cup concept is that the entire $10 million would be taken home by the last player standing after six knockout rounds. The other 63 receive nothing.
When the Laver Cup was announced, just over two years ago, it seemed like an adventurous proposal in a tennis world that had been running along the same broad schedule for decades. Since then, though, the landscape has shifted dramatically.
After the Association of Tennis Professionals began work on a new week-long event – the World Team Cup – in Australia at the start of the season, the International Tennis Federation then produced their own plans to remodel the 118-year-old Davis Cup from a year-long knockout event into a glitzy jamboree featuring 18 nations, all gathered into one place in the third week of November.
Kosmos was the prime mover behind the new Davis Cup model, which narrowly squeaked past the two-thirds majority it required at the ITF’s annual general meeting in August. Kosmos has promised a $3 billion investment over 25 years – such a huge sum that many have questioned whether the investors can possibly make their money back.
The thinking behind the offer is now becoming clearer, however, as Kosmos moves to fill in the gaps in the plan. At the moment, the Davis Cup runs over four weeks, spread across the calendar, and Pique’s backers want to occupy all of them.
We already know that the first week, in early February, is to host an old-school home-and-away qualifying round, from which the winners will progress to the Davis Cup finals in November. Meanwhile, the second week, in early April, has been earmarked for some kind of joint men’s and women’s exhibition with echoes of the Hopman Cup.
Now that the Majesty Cup has arrived in the debate, the immediate prospect of the Davis Cup finals being moved forward from November to September – something that Pique suggested in an interview with Le Figaro last month – appears to have receded.
- Simon Briggs, tennis correspondent
As the second edition of the Laver Cup begins on Friday in Chicago, tennis’s warring administrators have come up with yet another format: a 64-man, winner-takes-all event that goes under the working title of the Majesty Cup.
The new idea is technically an exhibition and would be staged in the week after the US Open. But the eye-catching detail is the proposed prize money of $10 million (£7.5 million), which is to be supplied by Gerard Pique’s iconoclastic investment group, Kosmos.
For purposes of comparison, that is about $2 million more than the entire purse at an ATP Masters 1000 event – the next-most-prestigious category of tournament after a grand slam. But whereas a Masters tournament follows a carefully delineated pay structure, in accordance with ATP rules, the twist of the Majesty Cup concept is that the entire $10 million would be taken home by the last player standing after six knockout rounds. The other 63 receive nothing.
When the Laver Cup was announced, just over two years ago, it seemed like an adventurous proposal in a tennis world that had been running along the same broad schedule for decades. Since then, though, the landscape has shifted dramatically.
After the Association of Tennis Professionals began work on a new week-long event – the World Team Cup – in Australia at the start of the season, the International Tennis Federation then produced their own plans to remodel the 118-year-old Davis Cup from a year-long knockout event into a glitzy jamboree featuring 18 nations, all gathered into one place in the third week of November.
Kosmos was the prime mover behind the new Davis Cup model, which narrowly squeaked past the two-thirds majority it required at the ITF’s annual general meeting in August. Kosmos has promised a $3 billion investment over 25 years – such a huge sum that many have questioned whether the investors can possibly make their money back.
The thinking behind the offer is now becoming clearer, however, as Kosmos moves to fill in the gaps in the plan. At the moment, the Davis Cup runs over four weeks, spread across the calendar, and Pique’s backers want to occupy all of them.
We already know that the first week, in early February, is to host an old-school home-and-away qualifying round, from which the winners will progress to the Davis Cup finals in November. Meanwhile, the second week, in early April, has been earmarked for some kind of joint men’s and women’s exhibition with echoes of the Hopman Cup.
Now that the Majesty Cup has arrived in the debate, the immediate prospect of the Davis Cup finals being moved forward from November to September – something that Pique suggested in an interview with Le Figaro last month – appears to have receded.
