Emma Raducanu won’t be starting her clay season in Stuttgart as usual and suddenly a report from October makes more sense.
At the start of this week, the organizers of the WTA 250 tournament in Rouen released its entry list and the British tennis player’s name was there. In the past, the 22-year-old preferred to hit clay for the first time in Stuttgart – which takes place in the same week as Rouen.
In Stuttgart, Porsche is the main sponsor and the tournament is officially named the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix. And after becoming a Porsche ambassador in 2022, Raducanu made three consecutive appearances at the German clay tournament between 2022 and 2024. But in late 2024, The Daily Mail reported that the German car brand took back one of the supercars they gifted to the 2021 US Open champion.
“Emma no longer has a Porsche. They took it back. It used to have pride of place at her home,” a report from The Daily Mail claimed at the time.
In the same report, it was suggested that the luxurious German carmaker didn’t feel that Raducanu was meeting the expectations: “A source who works in the sponsorship business tells me that Porsche is known for the swiftness with which it withdraws its vehicles from celebrity ambassadors if it does not feel that it is achieving value for money.”
Naturally, all of this led to rumors that the deal between the two sides ended.
Is Raducanu still their ambassador?
In 2023, the German car giant added Iga Swiatek to their family. And the Polish five-time Grand Slam champion is confirmed to play in Stuttgart this year and make her fourth consecutive appearance at the tournament.
Since Swiatek is playing and Raducanu won’t, the logical question is whether the German carmaker decided to cut ties with the British tennis star.
During some of the past Stuttgart editions, the 22-year-old Briton used her time there to also conduct her sponsorship commitments. This year, that won’t be the case – at least not in that week.
Tennis World USA