LONDON—The ATP World Tour Finals will continue to be played at London’s O2 Arena next year, but the event is discussion with other cities for 2016 and beyond.
The tournament has held in London since 2009, and sessions have been extremely well-attended. "At the moment we're looking at every single option," said ATP CEO Chris Kermode. "We're here obviously in '15. We do have a one‑year option to stay in '16, which we have to kick in by think I about March or April next year. It’s been hugely successful here. I think it shows the demand for tennis here in the UK. The two sessions [a day] has worked, which people were severely questioning when we first started.
“But I also have sort of due diligence to look at where the other options are, see what offers are on the table. I think it's a testament to the strength of what we built up here that there is huge interest from four other regions. We're currently in discussions."
According to a report in the *Telegraph*, the cities of Shanghai, Beijing, Doha, and Dubai are frontrunners. Latin America would like to host the tournament, but may not have the necessary capital.
Changing the surface is also a possibility, added Kermode. Previously, Rafael Nadal has said that he would like for the season-ending championship to be played clay, rather than on hard courts. The ATP World Tour Finals has never been played on clay since it began in 1970. Melbourne hosted it in 1974 and used grass courts.
“Rafa I speak to regularly about this. I mean, it's a good question," Kermode said. "There is a school of thought that you could change the surface each year to be the season‑ending thing. There's some logic in that. I'm not saying we're going to do that in case anyone writes that. The other side is it does end the swing of indoor events. So what we try to do, there's hard-court swings, clay-court swings. This just happens to be at the end of the season that is the indoor swing. I personally think it makes sense to do that. Again, open to looking at anything."