The meeting was held on the sidelines of the agreement signing ceremony for the 2019 ITTF World Championships, to be held in Budapest, Hungary, as well as the top-level discussions on the opening of the region’s first ITTF Table Tennis Academy in partnership with Aspire Academy. The meeting was attended by ITTF President Thomas Weikert, ITTF Deputy President and QTTA President Khalil Ahmed al Mohannadi, ITTF CEO Steve Dainton, Hungarian Table Tennis Association President Roland Natran and other top officials of the sport body.
The agenda of the meeting was to develop and conceptualise plans for 2018 and beyond, with a particular focus on developing the strategy for the 2021 commercial rights cycle.
This comes after the ground-breaking signing ceremony between ITTF and SportsMaster in Singapore on July 2 which will see the unification of the ITTF World Tour, TTX (Table Tennis X), World Veterans Tour and T2APAC League, under ITTF’s new professional platform, together with the institutional platforms, of which the World Championships is the key pillar.
ITTF CEO Dainton gave an update on the future platforms, with a particular emphasis on the ITTF World Table Tennis Championships, which will be expanded significantly from 2021. The Future Events Working Group will now start working on the criteria and stages to reach the World Table Tennis Championships Finals.
ITTF Management discussed the presentation and format of the World Table Tennis Championships Finals, which will be a huge show for table tennis. Additional staffing was discussed, with the ITTF currently on the biggest recruitment drive in its history as it looks to professionalise further.
The Management Team also moved forward with new methods of internal operations and procedures, which will streamline communication and further enhance ITTF’s workflow. The Management team were also updated on ITTF’s competition calendar and events, future high performance and development initiatives, finances, budgeting, and the ITTF Foundation.
Speaking at the agreement signing ceremony for the World Championships, Weikert said, “It is a privilege to be here in Qatar once again. Qatar has the reputation of being one of the biggest and best organisers of sports events. As you all know, Qatar Open is one of the only is one of only six top-tier Platinum events on the ITTF World Tour calendar and it has always been a privilege to host any of our events in Qatar. I believe the signing of this agreement in Qatar as well as other events held in the past three days is another pointer to how much dear Qatar is to the ITTF family.”
The ITTF president noted that the federation had a fruitful discussion with the management of the Aspire Academy on their plans to open the first ITTF Table Tennis Academy in the region in Qatar. “The discussions has so far been positive and we hope to see faster developments in this regard going forward,” he said.
Earlier in his remarks, Mohannadi welcomed the guests and reiterated his association’s (QTTA) commitments to the development of the sport in the region. A TTX tournament was held to round off all activities of the three-day events with prizes distributed to the winning team headed by the ITTF president.
