Dubai bans Israeli tennis player from country and tournament

It was earlier last week.
My bad.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/16/sports/tennis/16araton.html

 

I wrote the CEO of Barclays -- title sponsor of the event -- letting him know that I thought he should pull his company's name off the event.

He finally responded this morning:

 

Right. And yet the Barclays web site for the tournament makes zero mention of Peer, or Roddick's boycott, in its news stories. In fact, some of the releases have Roddick skipping the tournament because of injury.
And I call BS on Mr. Varley's contention that the tournament has nothing to do with the government. Most every news release from the tournament ends with this:

Play at the Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships, which is held under the patronage of H.H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai ...

Yankeefan, in searching for answers, you did more than most tennis fans and players. Good for you.

 

Well, they've been apolitical through the years all right.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/237392.stm

 

Yeah, that was pretty cool. Talk about a lame-ass response from the Barclays guy. And where was the UAE's "commitment" to players being able to compete in tourneys for which they've qualified when Shahar Peer came along?

 

I used to be in charge of sports marketing at a major corporation.

I told him that if I was the title sponsor of this event I would personally pull down every sign I had up at the site.

I mentioned to him that the Tennis Channel had cancelled their coverage and asked him what he was going to do.

I'm disappointed in his response. He had a real chance to make a stand and I imagine he made a business decision that it wasn't worth it. A shame.

 

I didn't know Roddick boycotted the Dubai tournament.

Which other players boycotted?

 

No one else's agent was intelligent or persuasive enough.

 

How hard can it be?
"Dude, skip this one. I just lined up a $500K corporate exo in Hilton Head anyway."