On Thursday, Andy Murray and Kiki Bertens were crowned champions of the Mutua Madrid Open Virtual Pro, the innovative online tournament that brought together 16 ATP players and 16 WTA players to square off in a Manolo Santana Stadium that was recreated in exquisite detail in the videogame Tennis World Tour (Nacon Gaming). Broadcast exclusively on Facebook Gaming, the tournament attracted spectacular viewing figures for its first edition, which was played over four days.
Including the broadcasts in both Spanish (PlayStation España’s Facebook page) and English (Mutua Madrid Open’s Facebook page), the Mutua Madrid Open Virtual Pro recorded the following figures: 75,632,205 people reached, 15,163,552 unique users, 8,683,153 video minutes played and 160,096 interactions from Monday 27 to Thursday 30 April.
With an online audience of 3,790,888 spectators per day, the Mutua Madrid Open Virtual Pro exceeded all expectations to become a global phenomenon thanks to the 62 competition matches, streamed in a spectacular television production that included live commentary from Feliciano López, world number 56 and director of the Mutua Madrid Open, Anabel Medina, Spanish Fed Cup captain and two-time French Open doubles champion, Alberto Berasategui, ex-number 7 in the rankings and winner of 14 ATP titles and Álex Corretja, ex-world number two and winner of 17 titles, including the ATP Finals in 1998.
In addition to the competition matches, there was a Charity Mutua Madrid Open Virtual Pro event, which pitted the best gaming content creators against the tennis players (Stefanos Tsitsipas was the champion), there were interviews with the players every day and a highlights programme every evening showing the best moments of the competition.+
The Mutua Madrid Open Virtual Pro was conceived as a charity initiative to help the tennis players most in need at this time, those that have no income to help them through these months of inactivity and those affected by Covid-19. To do so, the tournament included a total purse of 300,000 euros in the two competitions (150,000 ATP and 150,000 WTA), from which the winners will be able to decide how much they donate to their peers on tour who are currently suffering economically. In addition, the Mutua Madrid Open Virtual Pro donated 50,000 euros to the Madrid Food Bank to help reduce the social impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.