In 1926, the ITTF was founded by William Henry Lawes of
Wymondham and Ivor Montagu. The nine founding members were
Austria,
Czechoslovakia,
Denmark,
England,
Germany,
Hungary,
India,
Sweden and Wales. The first international tournament was held in January 1926 in
Berlin, and the first
World Table Tennis Championships was held in December 1926 in London. It was the only event for over 50 years that was run and managed commercially by the ITTF. In 1980, the
ITTF World Cups was introduced, followed by the
ITTF World Tour in 1996. Until 2003, commercial rights for these events were passed on to the local organising committees (LOC) but a different approach was taken to centralise rights through the creation of TMS. TMS was tasked to manage these rights on behalf of ITTF, until 2017 when ITTF decided to buy back the rights to be taken in house. In 2018, professional consultants
Deloitte and
Withers were engaged to assist with remodelling the way that the ITTF does business. Through full models and financial understanding of our events and other worldwide properties, ITTF sought to understand the untapped commercial potential of
table tennis. One key finding led to the idea of separation between the management of the professional and institutional structures of table tennis. On 30 May 2019, ITTF announced the idea of World Table Tennis (WTT), a new commercial vehicle for table tennis. To launch WTT, the ITTF executive committee appointed a selection panel. The panel included ITTF President
Thomas Weikert, ITTF Deputy President Khalil Al-Mohannadi, ITTF Executive Vice President for Finance
Petra Sorling, ITTF CEO Steve Dainton, and ITTF Marketing Director Matthew Pound.
Recent hires newsreel about the WTT, September 2024. WTT also announced the hire of Philippe Le Floc’h, former Chief Commercial Officer at
FIFA and marketing director at
UEFA, as Senior Commercial Strategy Consultant, in line with WTT's aim to commercialise the sport. WTT Macao was announced on 11 September 2020 to be held between 25 and 29 November 2020. The debut event was a promotional showcase featuring 16 of the world's best male and 16 of the world's best female players. The event implemented a brand new format with innovative scoring methods. It also featured a prize purse of US$800,000 with players paid a minimum of US$15,000, and earning more prize money per match they win. Next to join was Melissa Soobratty. Announced on 4 December 2020, the former vice president, Media at Football Marketing Asia joined as WTT Senior Media Director to oversee all areas related to content, to further professionalise the organisation's expanding media operations. == WTT event structure ==