The third edition of the Six Kings Slam, a high-stakes men’s tennis exhibition in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, will not go off as scheduled next week amid tensions in the Middle East.
The six-player tournament was scheduled for Oct. 21, 22 and 24 and has been moved to Dec. 27-30, according to a statement shared Wednesday on X by Turki Al-Sheikh, chairman of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority.
The statement said the decision to reschedule the event came after “an assessment of the organizational and logistical challenges associated with hosting the tournament and their potential impact on the quality of the audience experience.”
In Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, the King Khalid International Airport is closed after it was struck by drone and missile attacks attributed to Houthi rebels from Yemen during the past week. The New York Times reported that at least 14 people have been killed and hundreds more injured in the Iran-backed attacks.
The tournament was set to include Carlos Alcaraz, Novak Djokovic, Alexander Zverev, Taylor Fritz, Alex de Minaur and Learner Tien, the latter a replacement for the injured Jannik Sinner.
It is not known whether the players have committed to the replacement dates.
Each participant is guaranteed an appearance fee of $1.5 million, with the winner earning an additional $4.5 million. Sinner walked away with $6 million in each of the event’s first two years, defeating Alcaraz in the final both times.
–Field Level Media
