The WTA today formally announced a three-year, multi-million dollar sponsorship with Xerox, which will become the tour's supplier of business services and office document technology (WTA). SPORTSBUSINESS JOURNAL's Daniel Kaplan reports this is the tour's "most significant such pact since Sony Ericsson departed as lead backer last year." While the new deal "will be the tour’s largest sponsorship, the WTA will continue to seek a partner to fill the role of lead sponsor." The WTA "initially wanted Xerox to take that top sponsorship position, a slot the tour has been shopping since early 2012, but the business services and documents company did not want to spend that requisite amount of money." The WTA’s six-year, $88M title sponsorship deal with Sony Ericsson was announced in late '04 and was "touted at the time as the largest in pro tennis and the largest in women’s sports." WTA Chair & CEO Stacey Allaster said that the tour is "happy to work with an international brand like Xerox, calling it a very significant deal." As part of the new sponsorship, Xerox will "perform audits on the WTA and the 19 tournaments that initially will take part in the sponsorship, assessing their business processes and informational technology systems." At those events, Xerox "will have on-court branding, though not net signage as Sony Ericsson had." The WTA has made a "big push into Asia, though none of the 19 events affected by the deal are in that region." The WTA and Xerox "will assess after this year if the sponsorship can expand to any of the WTA’s other 35 events" (SPORTSBUSINESS JOURNAL, 2/4 issue).
