Trivandrum Premier Tennis League

About TPTL

Kerala's premier franchise based Tennis tournament

The Trivandrum Premier Tennis League (TPTL) is a high-profile franchise-based team tennis competition, open to all Club members of Trivandrum. Teams are owned by individual or corporate franchisees, and players purchased by the owners through an auction process. All matches are played on the show court (Court 1) of the Trivandrum Tennis Club (TTC) under floodlights.

The tournament was conceived in the year 2015-16, with the first edition held in March 2016. Ever since then it has been organised every year and has remained the most popular event in TTC’s tournament calendar. While the week-long extravaganza is a virtual carnival for tennis lovers, the tennis competition is contested most fiercely by the 8 franchised teams every year. Prize money, branding opportunities and generation of overall camaraderie among the tennis community of Trivandrum are some of the benefits that accrue to the franchise owners.

TPTL has a novel concept in that all the registered participants go through an open auction of players, which is held a month prior to the tournament. Every player, including reserves, is bid for and bought by the franchisee at a cost based on his perceived value to the team. Playing ability, age, reputation and other criteria during the auction process affect the bid prices of players.

Each franchisee builds his team leveraging strategies to utilize the capped amount available for player purchase. A team needs to have a minimum of 5 players since each tie consists of two doubles matches and one singles match. Usually a team has 7 to 8 members. The franchise owner too can be a playing team member and he is assigned a fixed cost within the total cap.

The amalgamation of the experienced tournament players and the average club players in a single team unit and the fact that every player has been paid to be a team member makes TPTL a unique venture. The next edition (TPTL VII) has been scheduled for January 2022. The 8 franchisees who participated in Edition VI held in January 2021 have confirmed their continued participation.