Who owns the Barcelona Open?
The Barcelona Open takes place this week at the historic Real Club de Tenis Barcelona-1899, the oldest tennis club in Spain.
Since 1953, the formerly amateur-only tournament has been staged at the famous tennis club in the heart of Catalonia.
While Carlos Alcaraz is the defending champion, Rafael Nadal is unsurprisingly the most successful player in the event’s history, with a dozen titles to his name.
Since 2019, the Barcelona Open has been owned by the Spanish-based talent agency Tennium.
Tennium acquired the rights for the tournament from another massive talent agency with IMG who still own the rights to several other big tournaments.
Since relinquishing the rights to the Barcelona Open, IMG have acquired the Madrid Open ATP 1000 event to accompany their administration of the Miami Open and the WTA 500 Silicon Valley Classic.
Tennium are a multi-sports agency that is focused on tennis and is headquartered in Barcelona.
Recently, the Davis Cup appointed Tennium as their official partners in Spain.
Despite being an ATP 500 event, the Barcelona Open is something of a reference point for form on clay and the winner of this tournament is inevtiably considered a contender for later events on clay like the Madrid Open and Roland Garros.
The biggest name on the books of the the agency at the moment, is Monte Carlo Masters finalist Holger Rune while the agency have a lot of junior players on their books as they seek to find the next big star in tennis.
In 2023 we will witness the 70th edition of the Barcelona Open with eight top 20 players in the field including defending champion and world No 2 Carlos Alcaraz.
Curiously Tennium’s top man Rune will not be in Barcelona this season as he seeks to defend his Munich Open title instead.
Barcelona Open organisers came in for criticism of their scheduling in the midst of the disruption of torrential rains last season, with some players even accusing organisers of favouritism with some players catching the short end of the stick when it comes to late-night matches.
The favourites to win the 70th anniversary of the Godó are the defending champion Alcaraz, Greek clay maestro Stefanos Tsitsipas, world No 4 Casper Ruud and Monte Carlo Masters semi-finalist Jannik Sinner.
Outsiders to watch include American star Frances Tiafoe, Russian No 3 Karen Khachanov, top Brit Cameron Norrie and the conqueror of Novak Djokovic in Monte Carlo, Lorenzo Musetti.
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All told, there will be close to $3 million of prize money up for grabs at the event with a slight increase from the purse that was on offer last term.
The winner of the singles event will be rewarded with a cash purse of around $525,000.
Nadal will not be fit to take part but his presence will still be felt in Barcelona. In 2017, the Real Club de Tenis Barcelona’s centre court was renamed Pista Rafa Nadal to honour one of Spain’s greatest athletes of all time.
