Featured image credit: G-13114/CC BY-SA 4.0/Edited for size
Manchester’s AO Arena has been announced as one of the host venues for the group stages of this year’s Davis Cup Finals.
The arena will host its event from September 12-17. The three other European cities that will host group stages this year will be announced tomorrow (Wednesday).
Two nations from each of the four group stage events will progress to the knockout stage in the Spanish city of Malaga, which struck a two-year hosting rights deal with the International Tennis Federation (ITF) in April 2022.
The Lawn Tennis Association has a multi-year agreement in place with the ITF for Great Britain to host a group stage on the basis that Britain qualifies or receives a wild card for the finals in each of those years. Glasgow’s Emirates Arena hosted last year’s event, and the LTA said it is taking the competition to different parts of the country to further open up tennis to more audiences.
Manchester will become the fifth different British city to host the Davis Cup over the past 10 years, joining Coventry, Glasgow, London and Birmingham. Manchester has not hosted the event since July 1994, when Great Britain played Romania at the Northern Lawn Tennis Club.
Sixteen teams will compete in the group stages, with eight teams progressing to the knockout stage. Canada and Australia, the 2022 champions and runners-up, respectively, will be seeded first and second, with Spain third and Croatia fourth.
Last year, group stage events were also held in Bologna, Hamburg and Valencia, with Malaga’s Palacio de Deportes José María Martín Carpena hosting the knockout stage. This year’s knockout stage in Malaga will take place from November 21-26.
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