The International Virtual Tennis Federation (IVTF), the global governing body for virtual tennis competitions, announced that the inaugural World Tennis Esports Championship (WTEC) will make its debut in Las Vegas, Nevada, later this month.
The competition will take place from Sept. 9 – 10, at The Space, a community venue in Las Vegas offering a 3,000 square foot performance center that features a theater, rehearsal studios, and more. The venue offers limited seating (around 250 seats) but the competition will also be broadcast live via YouTube.
WTEC will feature 16 players who managed to qualify through winning at national VR tennis leagues in Austria, Switzerland, Germany, India, Australia, UK & Ireland, Canada, and the United States; or managed to be one of the eight competitors to be the highest-ranked on the Tennis Esports Tour. The competitors will compete for a share of the total prize pool of $100,000 USD.
Partners for the WTEC include MGM Group, Sportradar, the ÖTV Austrian Tennis Federation, AEL (Australian Esports League), the First Coast Esports Alliance, GameForYou, and NoScope Gaming.
More details about the WTEC can be found at thespacelv.com or www.tennis-esports.com.
Organizers claim that VR tennis has experienced explosive growth in the past years, ballooning from a mere 35,467 to 400,000 within the past year. Eight countries have also established national VR tennis leagues to compete both regionally and internationally.
Virtual reality (VR) games are rarely used as centerpieces for competitive gaming, but seem to be popular with those involved in the IOC’s movement towards creating events that revolve around esports. These efforts are often fraught with conflicts of interests, which ultimately leads to putting subpar sports simulation games forward as competitive platforms such as Virtual Tae Kwon Do and Tic-Tac Bow. The Esports Advocate chronicled some of this in our reporting on the Olympic Esports Series in 2023.