Fort Worth, Texas grabs another major sporting event with Dickies Arena
Sources confirmed the 2022 Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) Finals will be played at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth.
Jon Wertheim of Sports Illustrated first reported the news early Saturday morning.
The event is scheduled to start the week of October 31 and run through the first week of November.
Sources said fans can expect tickets to go on sale in the next seven to 14 days.
The event is typically held in Shenzhen Bay Sports Center in China, but the WTA announced last year that all of its tournaments scheduled for that nation were suspended.
The move was in response to China’s handling of Peng Shuai, the Chinese women’s tennis player who in Nov. of 2021 accused a high-ranking member of China’s communist party of sexual assault.
That was a significant move for the WTA, an organization that has received hundreds of millions of dollars from China in return for having its events there.
The WTA has been looking to hold an event in DFW for several years; mutual friends between Dickies Arena representatives and the WTA started conversing about this possibility several months ago.
It just happened that Dickies Arena had nothing on the schedule to conflict with potentially hosting the WTA Finals.
The WTA Finals is the second highest class of professional tennis behind the Grand Slam events; the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, and U.S. Open.
The WTA Finals started in 1972. It consists of the world’s top eight singles players in the rankings, and doubles teams; they will play three round robin matches to advance to the semifinals, and the final.
The arena setup will consist of one single court in the middle of Dickies Arena floor. Practice courts will be setup outside around the Will Rogers complex.
This will be the second time a major tennis tournament will be played in DFW this year. The Dallas Open of the ATP Tour was played in February on SMU’s campus.
This is the second time Dickies Arena and Fort Worth will host an event that was previously anchored in another destination, but moved for abnormal reasons.
The Professional Bull Riders (PBR) moved its world finals from Las Vegas to Fort Worth; the event took place in May of 2022, and signed a three-year contract to host its finals in Fort Worth.
This was as a result of both the PBR and the National Finals Rodeo leaving Las Vegas for Fort Worth and Arlington because of COVID restrictions in Nevada in 2020.
Dickies Arena opened in November of 2019, and has hosted sporting events for USA Gymnastics, USA Wrestling, NCAA basketball tournament games, and professional lacrosse.
A formal announcement for the WTA Finals is expected within the week.
(No, Serena Williams won’t be playing in it).
This story was originally published September 3, 2022 at 11:08 AM.
