Ping pong to go pro

The International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) announced plans to set up an integrated commercial programme in collaboration with sports agency Sportsmaster yesterday.

The announcement, made at the Shangri-La Hotel Singapore, concluded with a signing ceremony between ITTF president Thomas Weikert and Sportsmaster CEO Frank Ji.

The deal aims to professionalise the sport by 2021.

It will unify various competition formats such as the ITTF World Tour, World Veterans Tour, Table Tennis X (TTX), and T2 Asia Pacific Table Tennis League (T2Apac) under ITTF's new professional platform.

It will also grant T2Apac the rights to host world tour events, and makes table tennis the first sport to have its professional platform connected to its world ranking and Olympics qualification systems.

The initiative comes as part of a recent drive to modernise the sport, with alternative formats like TTX launched in 2016 and the T2Apac rolled out in June last year.

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ITTF CEO Steve Dainton believes that the partnership will make the sport more attractive to professionals by increasing the prize pool through commercial revenue.

He said: "We aim high and we want to think big.

"We want to bring table tennis on an equal level with other sports by showing that we can deliver to the players prize money."

Ji echoed similar sentiments, saying: "We want to make table tennis more valuable and eventually get more young people involved."

Unlike conventional table tennis which is played under a best- of-seven format, players in T2Apac attempt to win as many games as possible within a 24-minute period.

We want to bring table tennis on an equal level with other sports by showing that we can deliver to the players prize money. ITTF CEO Steve Dainton

There is no deuce, and the first to reach 11 points wins a game.

If a game ends within the last two minutes of the period, a final five-point kill zone game is played.

The inaugural season of the T2Apac, from June to November last year, saw local paddler and Olympic medallist Feng Tianwei reach the women's final, narrowly losing to Romanian Bernadette Szocs.

Besides Feng, the T2Apac also featured some of the biggest stars in table tennis like men's world No. 2 Timo Boll and women's world No. 2 Wang Manyu.

Singapore Table Tennis Association president Ellen Lee welcomed the announcement, and believes that the new arrangement will revive interest in the sport as a viable career path.

She said: "At the end of the day, we have to be very realistic as money still plays a big part for any sportsman to become professional.

"We will be letting our players know that there's this new format and what it could possibly mean for them in the future, and possibly persuade the parents to see this new dimension and look upon sports as not just a way of life but also a profession."