ROME (AP) - The ATP Finals is moving to Turin in 2021.
The Italian city will host the tennis event for five years through 2025, succeeding current host London.
The tournament will be played inside the PalaAlpitour, a 15,000-seat multi-purpose arena built to host hockey games during the 2006 Turin Olympics.
Five cities bid for the event, including: London; Manchester, England; Singapore; Tokyo; and Turin.
“Our congratulations to Turin on putting together such a comprehensive and impressive bid,” ATP president Chris Kermode said Wednesday. “Italy provides us with one of the strongest and most established tennis markets in Europe and has a proven track record for hosting world class tennis events.”
Held each November, the ATP Finals is the season-ending event for the top eight men’s singles players and doubles teams.
“The ATP Finals is the biggest and most prestigious event that we have at the ATP. It’s a tournament that has historically moved around and so I’m very excited to see it move to Turin from 2021,” said top-ranked Novak Djokovic, a five-time winner of the event.
Italy also recently began hosting the Next Gen Finals, a year-end event for the best under-21 players. That tournament is slated to be held in Milan at least through 2021.
The Next Gen Finals and the ATP Finals are held on back-to-back weeks, which will create a Milan-Turin focal point for the sport.
“We look forward to bringing the ATP’s flagship season-ending event to tennis’ growing fan base in Italy for the first time,” Kermode said.
The tournament will boast a record prize purse of $14.5 million in 2021, the ATP said.
The Turin selection comes only days after Italian player Fabio Fognini won the Monte Carlo Masters and 2½ weeks before the Italian Open in Rome - a big boost for tennis in the country.
The Italian government pledged 78 million euros ($90 million) in funding for the ATP Finals - the latest in a series of big sports events it is backing.
Italy is also the front-runner in the race to host the 2026 Winter Olympics with a bid from Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo; and the country has already been assigned the 2022 Ryder Cup golf competition to be held at the Marco Simone club just outside Rome.
Angelo Binaghi, the president of the Italian Tennis Federation, said it “would not have been possible” to secure the event without the government’s help.
“Now we’ll pass the ball to our technical area, which must do its part within the next three-four years by bringing at least one Italian player to the PalaAlpitour,” Binaghi said. “The results over the last few years, especially the brilliant start to this season, give us hope that the stage is set.”
Marco Cecchinato was a semifinalist at the French Open last year and Lorenzo Musetti, another Italian player, won this year’s Australian Open boys’ title at the age of 16.
Turin will become the 15th different host city of the ATP Finals since the tournament’s inception in 1970. New York (13 editions from 1977-89) and London (12 editions from 2009-20) are the cities that have hosted the tournament the most.
Roger Federer holds the record with six titles at the ATP Finals.
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