ITTF To Allow Multi-City Hosts Of World Championship Events
January 14, 2020
The ITTF have revealed that they are in talks with the Chinese Table Tennis Association to allow multiple host-cities for the 2022 ITTF World Team Table Tennis Championship Finals.
In a statement, the organisation says “This will enable greater TV coverage of more matches during the competition, as well as increased fan engagement over multiple host cities across the country, as has been witnessed in other major sports events, such as the FIFA and FIBA World Cups.”
ITTF CEO Steve Dainton said: “The philosophy of the new expanded World Table Tennis Championships Finals has always been focused on increasing the global footprint of our sport’s biggest event. This is a format that will eventually integrate all our members and maximise exposure of the event.
“By providing relevant content in multiple locations and engaging with a larger community / audience in the host country, the 2022 World Team Table Tennis Championships Finals have a higher potential to ensure worldwide media coverage and achieve commercial success.
“Due to the popularity of the sport, we believe that China is the ideal place to implement this new concept. Discussions have already been initiated with CTTA and they seem very positive,” he added.
They have also decided to implement new Table Tennis Review technology that was successfully introduced of TTR at the 2019 ITTF World Tour Grand Finals.
Dainton commented: “With the tech trend already so prominent in sports, we felt it was important to implement a new technology that will ensure a fair competition for all the athletes, empowering them to challenge any decision made by the umpire. The benefits of using the TTR system are very positive and we can actually talk about an evolution of the sport of table tennis. We received very positive feedback from the players and we anticipate a major improvement in terms of the viewers’ experience going forwards.”
