Valencia, October 20, 2014

Juan Carlos Ferrero, former world number one and tournament director of the Valencia Open 500, said that the 2014 edition of the Spanish indoors event could be the last one, as the tournament’s future is uncertain at the moment. The championships, which despite having a license for the 45th week on the ATP World Tour until 2018, is not guaranteed to be staged in Valencia for the next years. According to Valencian newspaper Superdeporte, the organizers have listened to offers from other European cities and consider a change of city next year.

Former world number one Juan Carlos Ferrero

“It’s very difficult, almost impossible to continue with the tournament,” Juan Carlos Ferrero said this week. “Every year is a little bit more complicated. We are fighting to try to stay here every year. This year, of course, has been confirmed and we’ll have time to talk about next year. Despite the fact that there are other possibilities in the future, our desire is to continue here in Valencia, in a unique setting. The atmosphere during the entire week is very good. For us and for the city, it is important to see that the area is crowded with people enjoying all the activities,” the former world number one explained. Despite the efforts of the director to bring the tournament to the top each year, it has to deal with big problems of economic viability. The current edition is losing money again with a deficit of around one Million euros, a difficult fact for Valencia to deal with. It might give way to other European cities, which want to host the championship. In spite of the serious monetary drawbacks, one more year the Valencia Open has managed to bring together many of the best players in the world like David Ferrer, Andy Murray, Tomas Berdych, Fabio Fognini, John Isner or Roberto Bautista-Agut. In 2013, 175.000 people came to the Fun Park for fans and spectators at the City of Arts and Sciences and 70.000 tickets for the matches were sold. Nonetheless, this does not seem to be sufficient. The Valencia Open are in danger of disappearing.

The Agora building in the City of Arts and Science Valencia