The Kosmos business group claims 50 million dollars from the International Tennis Federation (ITF) after the breakdown of the agreement for the organization of the Davis Cup, its president announced Thursday Gerard Piqué.
“After the termination by the ITF there is now a dispute between us in which we claim up to 50 million dollars,” Piqué said in an interview published this Thursday by the newspaper Marca.
“We cannot say more due to confidentiality restrictions. But I feel very proud of everything we did,” added the former Barcelona soccer player, who defended the management of the Davis Cup made by his company.
“We believe that what we did with the Davis cup It is a resounding success story. We arrived with a competition that was decadent, it was in low hours. And at a sporting, economic level, above all, and audiences, we turned the tournament around, “he said.
“We quadrupled revenue in one year. We went from three to fifteen sponsors. What happens is that in 2020 comes the Covid and it disrupts everything in all sports,” said the president of Kosmos.
Kosmos had closed a 25-year agreement with the ITF in 2018 to organize the Davis Cup, but last January the federation announced that it was regaining control of the competition and ending its agreement with Piqué’s company.
A source close to the case then explained that the ITF and Kosmos they failed to reach a new financial agreement. “We had an agreement with the ITF, that we paid them a very significant amount of money, I would say that it was out of the market, 40 million a year,” Piqué told Marca.
“In 2020 there was no Davis Cup, during a part of 2021 it was played behind closed doors… The landline we were paying was out of the market,” insisted the former soccer player.
“We found ourselves with the Covid, which was something impossible to foresee,” he recalled, explaining that “many Leagues and federations adapted to that situation and the ITF decided not to want to renegotiate those terms. Then from one day to the next, the agreement ends.
Kosmos revolutionized the format of the Davis cup since 2019. The popular duels with a local team and another visitor were abandoned, with matches in five sets and dates spread throughout the year. Since that 2019, the tournament ends with a final phase, but the new formula did not quite meet the high expectations generated.
2023-06-22 14:58:49
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