Round Robin gone?

[Mist]

En het is definitief:

ATP Ends Round Robin Experiment

The ATP Board has voted to end the experimentation with round robin formats on the ATP tour, it was announced today. The remaining events who had initially volunteered for the round robin format will now revert to the original knock out competition.

The ATP had begun testing several versions of the format at lower level events this year following initial research that indicated it could be a measure to provide significant growth to the game.

The research showed it was popular among casual fans because it gave them more opportunity to see their local and favorite players than in a traditional knockout format. The format also had the added benefit of allowing tournaments to showcase their marquee players deeper into the tournament week and made TV scheduling of matches easier and more promotable.

However, the carefully monitored testing at the five test case events this year raised a number of concerns and weaknesses that were not apparent from desk research. Firstly, the 32 hybrid format caused confusion; second, resolving who would progress from the round robin stage with 3 men groups was often complicated; and third, sections of the media had difficulty in reporting round robin and consequently fans not at the event had difficultly in following early results. Finally, and significantly, no format or rule could address the overwhelming player concern that their destiny was not in their own hands as a result of dead matches or withdrawals.

The ATP Board considered all the research and analysis gathered during the experiment both from outside research agencies and tournament volunteers and concluded while there was a considerable amount of encouraging data, in the end the negatives outweighed the positives.

“The ATP is determined to be fact based, and not opinion led. We’re committed to a philosophy of ‘do it, try it, fix it or lose it,’ with initiatives that could grow our sport,” said ATP Chairman and President Etienne de Villiers. “We take all stakeholders into account, especially our players and tournaments, when we make decisions but will always have a fan focus.”

“It was a good experiment and we learned a lot from it. Some experiments will work and others won’t, but we will keep trying to find new and better ways of growing the appeal of men’s professional tennis,” de Villiers said.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.atptennis.com/en/news/2007/roundrobin.asp">http://www.atptennis.com/en/news/2007/roundrobin.asp</a><!-- m -->