ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — Marina Storti will be the CEO of WTA Ventures, the women’s professional tennis tour’s commercial enterprise with CVC Capital Partners that launched in March.
The hiring of Storti, who has been an executive at Sky, was announced Tuesday. She is expected to start in August at WTA Ventures, which was created to manage commercial activities for women’s tennis, including rights for broadcast, data, gaming, sponsorship, licensing and NFTs.
Storti has been at Sky since 2002 and has run its sports, cinema and entertainment streamlining platform, NOW, since 2019.
“I feel passionate about the role that women’s tennis has to play in leading the broader development of professional women’s sport worldwide and I see a real opportunity for further growth,” Storti said.
CVC Capital Partners, an investment manager, contributed $150 million for a 20% stake in WTA Ventures LLC. When the new entity was announced, WTA Chairman and CEO Steve Simon said it would be completely separate from St. Petersburg, Florida-based WTA Inc., which oversees the tour itself.
“Obviously, the ambition is to materially grow women’s professional tennis. Grow our profile, its value, the prize money,” Simon said in March. “This arrangement is certainly going to provide for us to create more investment opportunity to our players and our tournaments.” ___ AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
