The Executive Committee reflected on a hugely successful year so far for the ITTF, with the highlight being the Liebherr 2018 World Team Table Tennis Championships in Halmstad, which will be remembered for more reasons than just table tennis with the historic Unified Korean team.
ITTF President Mr. Thomas WEIKERT stated: “It was great to have this important Executive Committee meeting in the beautiful city of Prague. Our Czech hosts showed us brilliant hospitality and showed us their plans to develop table tennis in their country, which is very encouraging to see. The meeting was extremely fruitful and positive, and together as a team, we are determined to build on the current momentum, to achieve our goals stated in our strategic plan and continue to push table tennis to the next level.”
The French Table Tennis Federation President Mr. Christian Palierne was invited to come and sign the hosting agreement for the Liebherr 2018 Men’s World Cup, which will be held in Disneyland Paris from 19-21 October 2018. Mr. Palierne told the Executive Committee that the organization of the event is going smoothly, and the tickets for the last 2 days are already sold out.
The leaders of the ITTF also discussed and confirmed the importance of the 2021 commercial rights cycle, when all ITTF’s commercial rights become available. The ITTF will invest resources to ensure that the best result is achieved to move ITTF’s commercial rights to the next level in the next cycle.
The Executive Committee reconfirmed their support for North and South Korean unified teams at future events, to build on the momentum of the unified team at the World Championships as well as the unified doubles pairs at the Korea Open, which saw North Korea compete in the event for the first ever time.
ITTF’s professional staff gave an update on the new staff structure and appointments, the increase to 17 Challenge Series events in 2019, up from 9 in 2018, as well as the “Table Tennis. For All. For Life.” continental forums.
The next ITTF Executive Committee meeting will be held during the World Tour Grand Finals in December.