Williams sisters make journey worthwhile

TENNIS/Trilogy Event: The world number one and two tennis players, Serena and Venus Williams, have commanded almost €500,000 in appearance fees for the Trilogy event to be staged in Dublin over three days from December 5th.

Serena (21), who won the French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open this year and earned almost $4 million in prize money this season, shares the fund equally with her older sister in what is the biggest tennis exhibition to take place anywhere in the world for five years.

The last event of this calibre, in terms of the quality of players competing, was the Master of Champions event staged in Frankfurt in 1997. Outside of the four grand slam events in Melbourne, Paris, London and New York, few competitions assemble six of the world's top 10 players.

"Each player is different in the nitty gritty elements of each contract," said Trilogy head of operations Ciarán Duggan. "It's a scale. If you want to get the number one and two tennis players in the world they can command fees that are astronomical.

"We negotiated the fees with the players over four to five months and that's what we settled on. Seán (Collins, managing director) has been a professional player, and from that we know what professional players are currently getting for exhibitions. There's a value on all the players who come here and, yeah, sure I think that's (Williams fee) value."

In total €1.65 million has been spent on the 10 players, with the cost of the operation, which incorporates "a music, dance and fashion extravaganza", tipping €3.5 million.

Six of the players, Anna Kournikova, Barbara Schett, Jelena Dokic, Iva Majoli, former world number one Lindsay Davenport and Daniela Hantuchova, will take part in the fashion show on the Wednesday preceding the first day's play.

Davenport, who this year underwent knee injury and is ranked 12th in the world, will be the first player to arrive next Monday, with Monica Seles, Majoli and Schett arriving on Tuesday. Kournikova will be in Dublin on Wednesday morning with the Williams sisters. Jennifer Capriati will arrive the next day. Capriati takes part in just one match in the Ryder Cup-styled US v Europe event when she faces Hantchucova in the last match on Saturday.

The Williams sisters team up on Friday to play Hantuchova and Dokic, and on Saturday Serena faces Majoli and Venus takes on Dokic.

"The ticket sales have not been great yet and I think that comes down to a lack of belief. One of the purposes of this conference today is to convey that this tournament is absolutely taking place and the players will definitely be here. That is a certainty. We've done the deals with IMG (International Management Group who represent most of the players) and we've done the television deals," said Collins. "I don't believe RTÉ will be broadcasting the event but Sky Sports 1 in Ireland and the UK will be, along with ESPN in the US and a number of other networks."

So far 5,200 tickets have been sold for the RDS event, which has a capacity of 5,700 on each day. As the event is being run over three days, that figure leaves a considerable volume of tickets to be sold before December 5th.

Tennis Ireland are fully behind what is been called a "competitive exhibition", one the promoters hope to hold on an annual basis in different parts of the world.

"We set out to establish a brand and this is expected to run next year again," says Collins. "Sure, the whole thing is ambitious. But if we weren't ambitious, we wouldn't be here today."

FIXTURES - December 5th: L Davenport v B Schett 7.00; M Seles v A Kournikova, 9.00; December 6th: M Seles and L Davenport v B Schett and I Majoli, 7.00; V Williams and S Williams v D Hantuchova and J Dokic, 9.00; December 7th: S Williams v I Majoli 10.30; V Williams v J Dokic, 1.00; J Capriati v D Hantuchova, 3.30.