The Story
The global governing body of men’s professional tennis was initiated with the formation of Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) in 1972. The ATP World Tour 250 is a series of men’s tennis tournaments that are part of the ATP calendar.
On Jan 21, 2021, ATP announced that The Singapore Tennis Open, an ATP 250 indoor hard-court event, will be held on a single-year licence from Feb 22-28 in 2021 at the 3,000-seater OCBC Arena in the vast Singapore Sports Hub. Singapore previously hosted an ATP tournament between 1989-1992 and 1996-1999.
With the event being organised amidst a Global pandemic, as the appointed Lead Event Management Agency, we were tasked to develop and manage Competition Venue build-up, provide Games Services while ensuring strict adherence to Singapore’s Covid-19 Safe Management Measures (SMM) in the delivery of the project.
From the get-go, we had only approximately 8 weeks to provide a turn-key solution; working closely with the organising committee and its 15 appointed local agencies and companies, to create an International televised sporting event in accordance to International Tennis Federation (ITF) Tennis Court standards.
Besides building the courts to ITF standards, paying attention to details such as ITF standard net posts, certified court surface and programmed lightings, we had to take into consideration that not only do the event space need to be visually vibrant on-site, it must also be constructed for quality broadcast so that the experience for those watching the games from home will not be compromised; and making sure that strict observations to SMM will not affect the experience for stakeholders, athletes, officials as well as the allowable 250 on-site audience.
Safe Officiating was achieved by leveraging on the Hawk-Eye tennis officiating system – the first and only ball tracking technology to have passed stringent ITF testing measures. Live Scoring solution Crionet, one of ATP’s preferred service, was set up to capture data from umpire scoring system and the Hawk-Eye to provide a solid scoring and collecting/analyzing the same data-feed.
Back-of-house facilities and games services team was setup to provide operational and hospitality requirements of stakeholders, international delegates, athletes, officials and vendors for the event with strict implementation of SMM at the venue, as well as travel and movement protocol for players and officials in line with prevailing government regulations.
KIN is honoured to play our part in supporting and facilitating the safe return of international sporting events to Singapore. With our proven project execution methodology in Major Sporting Events, coupled with the aptitude in identifying components that can achieve sustainability by going virtual to bring about reduction in manpower and logistical costs, and delivering the event safely while observing stringent Covid-19 Safe Management Measures during a global pandemic!
