Davis Cup organisers happy with the controversial format

James Richardson
September 27, 2022

Davis Cup organisers Kosmos Tennis believe that the current 18-team format is a winner and will not return to home and away ties.

They have also made it clear that five-set matches will not return which is not good news for the traditionalists who want the tournament to go back to its roots.

Kosmos set out to revive the event and have injected an enormous amount of cash into the game as they seek to make something of the Davis Cup.

Speaking to Ubi Tennis Kosmos Tennis CEO Enric Rojas insisted the format is here to stay: “We have done this evolution (on making adjustments to the Davis Cup formats) until this year with four groups of four in September and then the finals in Malaga.

“This format of having the qualifiers in week five, group stages in week 37 and the finals in week 47 are going to stay.

“We don’t expect any changes going forward, it’s a format that is working. We need to improve a few things as you can imagine. But it’s a format that is going to stay.”

Rojas admitted that they might need to consider small tweaks to the scheduling with players raising concerns over late-night finishes.

“Although this format is staying, we still need to improve a few things and this is one element that we will put on the table at the end of the group stage for us to review together with the ITF,” Rojas added.

“We thought with these timings that these slots would be great. Especially in central Europe, and western Europe.

“We thought starting around this time when people were starting to finish work would be better but this has had an effect on the match times. We review this and are open to making changes if we feel that it is better to start earlier.”

Rojas would also admit that the organisers will need to review how the group stage hosts are selected and factors like wild variations in ticket pricing.

“There are federations, even private promoters, involved in the organization of the group stages.

“We (Kosmos) are also the promoter on behalf of the ITF and with our investments, we need to keep everybody happy and also have a bit of return on our investment because in the end there is also a private element to those investments.

Rojas confessed: “It’s true that the attendance was not as great as we were looking for.

“This is another thing we are going to review.

“We are going to speak with the promoters there, as well as the German federation, to see what we have done wrong and what we can do differently.

“One of the aims is the pricing because we thought we did our benchmarking for thinking what is the best price for having full attendance.

“Not having a full attendance, which is our main goal, is something that we need to review again.”

Enric Rojas