After five years of alliance, Gerard Piqué’s Kosmos Tennis company left the Davis Cup after failing to reach an agreement with the International Tennis Federation (ITF) headed by Gilles Moretton, where they renegotiated the 40 million fixed price down according to the edition agreed with the ITF so that Kosmos can continue to manage the men’s team tennis competition, according to ‘Marca’.
In 2019, the company of the former Catalan soccer player took the competition by signing a 25-year contract and an investment of 3,000 million dollars, but the annual fee ate up almost all the billing of the event and left no margin of income. The ITF agreed to renegotiate the ‘payment’ during the pandemic -10 million in 2020 and 19.7 in 2021- but since 2022 the payment has been withdrawn, now in 2022 it is 32 million euros, by 2023 it will be 36 million and in 2024, 44 million euros, according to ‘2Playbook’.
The management of Kosmos was strongly opposed by the media due to constant changes in the format. If at first it was played in a single place, in Madrid, at the end of the campaign, this 2022 they changed to a group stage in Bologna, Valencia, Hamburg and Glasgow, with the finals in Malaga, with double the income, even which is not enough to cover the ‘fee’. Now the 123-year-old tournament will once again be organized by the ITF itself.
This break does not mean that Kosmos will leave the world of tennis, because through Kosmos Management he continues to represent Dominik Thiem, Andrey Rublev, Borna Coric, Elina Svitolina or Daria Kasatkina.
Source: La Verdad
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