A World of Sports is Coming to Asia

Li Na has retired rather abruptly, but elite women's tennis has never been more present in her part of the world.

There were a record 17 Women's Tennis Association tournaments in the Asia-Pacific region this season, including six in Li's home country of China, and the most significant women-only event comes last.

It will be played this week in Singapore, where the WTA Finals have set up shop for at least the next five years.

The finals, formerly known as the WTA Championships, bring together the top eight singles players and top eight doubles teams and can lay a strong claim to being the most prestigious title for women outside the four Grand Slam events.

This is not the event's first trip to Asia. From 2008 to 2010, it was played in Doha, Qatar, where the money was great and attendance was not. It was moved to Istanbul for three years, which made for a much livelier atmosphere on the European side of the Bosporus.

But this is the first journey into the heart of Asia, and it is a fine reflection of where both the WTA and global sports see future revenues and growth.

"There are 600 million people within a four-hour radius of Singapore," said Stacey Allaster, chief executive of the WTA. "We're also near China and India, where there are massive tennis followings."

The men rode this train first, taking their year-end championships to Shanghai in 2002 and again from 2005 to 2008. But the women have been the most aggressive expansionists in the region of late, and the move to Singapore is a mutual back-scratch.

"The objective of getting the WTA championships was to bring a world-class event to Singapore," said Andrew Georgiou, chief executive of World Sport Group, a marketing agency based in Singapore that was instrumental to the bid. "Outside the majors, you cannot get a bigger tennis event to come, and for us that was one of the reasons we did a five-year deal. We wanted to bring it here and invest in it and develop it."

Singapore, a cosmopolitan and affluent city-state, hardly lacks for entertainment options, including an annual Formula One race. But it doesn't have a single tennis player with an official WTA or ATP singles ranking.

So popular success is hardly guaranteed in year one, and Li's retirement presumably won't help matters in a city where ethnic Chinese are in the majority.

David Shoemaker, chief executive officer of NBA China, is well placed to make comparisons as he was once WTA president and led the tour's early forays into Asia out of its office  in Beijing. He was also recently a finalist in the search for a new head for the ATP Tour, a position eventually filled by Chris Kermode.

"From the peanut gallery now, I still think the prospects for tennis are great in Asia," Shoemaker said in a telephone interview last week, shortly after the NBA's Sacramento Kings and Brooklyn Nets had played two games in China. "With the retirement of Li Na, I have a very close analogy, which is with the retirement of Yao Ming. I joined NBA China in June of 2011 and a month after that he announced his retirement from the NBA."

"The naysayers thought his retirement would spell doom for the popularity of basketball in China, and it instead has skyrocketed since he retired," he added, "and I guess I would say the same thing about Li Na retiring. I know she has talked about giving back to Chinese tennis, and I still think Chinese tennis and tennis globally have a very bright future."

The WTA's expansion in China - with five tournaments on the mainland and one in Hong Kong and another event in China coming next year - has not been without critics, including Li's agent, Max Eisenbud, who also represents the Russian star Maria Sharapova.

"I've been very, very, very worried about it for a long time," said Eisenbud, who maintains it is ill-advised to put so much emphasis on one market instead of spreading top events among other leading Asian countries.

China has one tournament (Beijing) among the tour's top-tier Premier Mandatory events and another (Wuhan) in the next tier of premier events. Japan, to cite one example, has none.

"First of all, they have no Li Na and even if she didn't retire now, it was only going to be a matter of time until she did, and I think you need star players to help grow the tournaments," Eisenbud said. "And I just wonder, where is it going to stop? The whole tour could be in China soon, so I think a lot of people are chasing money."

But the WTA is hardly alone in chasing Chinese market share and even less alone in chasing Asian market share.

"Asia is going to have some of the most phenomenal sporting events in the world; it's just a matter of time," Georgiou said. "You are seeing the start of it over the last five to 10 years."

He expects a shift away from imported content in the long run, with Asian leagues and Asian content becoming the draw, even in soccer.

"As the brands come, what they are going to do is put money in local clubs and local leagues," he said. "And then at some point in time it will reach an inflection point where the value and money will be in Asia, and the clubs in Asia will have more money than clubs in Europe. For those of us working hard in this market, we know that's going to happen. You can bet your house on it. By sheer growth of GDP, sport in Asia will become bigger than anywhere else in the world. It's only a matter of when."

© 2014 New York Times News Service