SPORT FEARS OVER BILLIE JEAN KING CUP DEAL

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THE INTERNATIONAL Tennis Federation is in talks with private investors over a major new partnership to revamp the Billie Jean King Cup just weeks after the embarrassing demise of a similar deal for the Davis Cup, City A.M. has learned.

And the move has sparked serious concerns, with some insiders demanding greater transparency and scrutiny around any investment in the Billie Jean King Cup – formerly the Fed Cup – before contracts are signed.

There are also calls for ITF president David Haggerty to step aside and allow an investigation into the signing and premature dissolution of the $3bn Davis Cup deal with Kosmos, the investment vehicle of former footballer Gerard Pique.

“Let’s scrutinise and be very careful with the upcoming Fed Cup deal,” an individual with knowledge of the confidential talks told City A.M. “There is no free lunch.”

The deal being discussed for the Billie Jean King Cup, the women’s equivalent of the Davis Cup, is understood to be with a US investor.

That proposal is believed to be for the ITF to receive a large cash advance in the form of a loan which would be repaid at an interest rate of around five per cent.

The tennis body, whose international team competitions are among its biggest cash generators, would retain a majority shareholding of around 60 per cent in the competition’s commercial rights, with the investors taking the remainder.

But some senior figures at the ITF fear that the cash-strapped organisation could be about to repeat the mistakes of the Kosmos deal, which was heralded as a 25-year contract but abandoned after less than five years earlier this month.

They feel that the ITF leadership should have allowed its member nations greater opportunity to review the terms of the arrangement with Pique and Kosmos, which was backed by Hi-

Sources point out that, in a significant development just months earlier, the ITF amended its statutes to give the board the power to make key decisions about the Davis Cup and Fed Cup, as it was then known, without an AGM.

Kosmos was contracted to pay the ITF $120m a year but that was reduced during the pandemic and recent attempts to renegotiate the terms resulted in the deal’s termination. Questions still surround this year’s competition.

The fiasco has raised questions for Haggerty, who was elected president of the ITF in 2015 and is up for re-election