Petra Sorling running for re-election as ITTF chief to continue the sport’s expansion, especially in the U.S.!

Published 3rd of May, The Sports Examiner, by Rich Perelman
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The International Table Tennis Federation will have elections at its Annual General Meeting on 27 May 2025, with three candidates for President confirmed:
• Mohamed El Hacen Ahmed Salem (MTN), the former Secretary General of the Mauritanian federation and its current President.
• Khalil Al-Mohannadi (QAT), a member of the ITTF Board since 1997, having served as Deputy President twice, Executive Vice President twice and Senior Executive Vice President since 2022.
• Incumbent Petra Sorling (SWE), a Board member of the Swedish member association since 2000 and President of the association from 2013-22, leaving after she was elected ITTF President in 2021. The first ITTF officer ever to be elected to the International Olympic Committee (in 2023), she has had a long career in real estate management and urban planning, but is now concentrating on table tennis.
Sorling took time out last week to participate in a forum with reporters, explaining her enthusiasm for continuing as the ITTF President.
Like many other sports, table tennis enjoyed a brilliant 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, with big crowds at the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles. During her tenure, a separate commercial arm has been set up – World Table Tennis – to run the high-end tournaments, which are showing strong interest in multiple European countries and in Asia.

Even better, says Sorling, “when we look at our spectators – we have data on that – it is mainly young fans, 18 to 24 years, females. … I think we are unique in that, in table tennis.”
She noted that the sport has been granted a sixth event for the 2028 Olympic Games – a Mixed Team event – with the Mixed Doubles added for Paris 2024, which will increase the sport’s footprint and visibility at the Games:
“I believe table tennis can be a top-8 sport in LA2028. It’s not something that is impossible if we continue to move in the speed that we have in the moment.”

The ITTF, like at least half of the Olympic-sport federations, is deeply dependent on a share of the IOC’s television revenue from the Games. It received $16 million from the IOC related to Paris 2024, in the third tier of payouts; the top two tiers consist of eight sports – aquatics, athletics and gymnastics in tier one and basketball, cycling, football, tennis and volleyball in the second – thus the reference to “top eight” … and more of the IOC’s television money.

The federation’s 2022 financial statements showed assets of $36.8 million with reserves of $14.2 million; 2022 revenue was $36.8 million with $39.8 million in spending for an annual loss of $2.95 million.
The new events are also helping the federation grow, as both the Mixed Doubles and Mixed Team results count for ranking points, putting pressure on member associations to increase the number of female players in order to field competitive teams in these events (and score points).
The ITTF is also involved in artificial intelligence in judging and for player performance and has undertaken e-sports action using virtual-reality glasses, “to meet the new generation where they are” and to get involved in the Olympic Esports Games to debut in 2027.

Asked how the federation can improve its finances to lessen reliance on the IOC, Sorling noted that the formation of the for-profit World Table Tennis entity came only in 2019, 85% owned by the federation and 15% by investors:
“Up ‘til now it has been a start-up phase, but already in 2024 we have done the turnaround. We have reached beyond break-even and I am looking forward to the next years that can also be profitable for the federation itself.”

She explained her view that the ITTF is poised for growth now:
“When I go back one year before the Olympic Games in Paris, I was more thinking on what will be the next term program and so on, but now that I have seen the result of what we have done in the first term and having seen, more or less, a full four years, I feel that we are on track, we have momentum, we have to keep table tennis ahead, so we have to do a little bit more of everything, but we also to show the member associations what it brings back on them.
“We were starting everything after the pandemic, that is what I did when I took office. We started a for-profit company, we were coming into a period of time [where] there was no events, we have to beg the organizers to come up and organize.

Now we have the other [way] as a problem: it’s a full calendar, we still only have 52 weeks.
“So it’s a positive problem, but it’s also for the member associations; 227 have to understand ‘what‘s in it for me.’ It’s good that they have these events, it’s good that they were sold out, but if I’m sitting as a president in Uruguay, what does it bring me? So that is what I have now … for them to feel that they are part of this journey.”

Beyond the annual ITTF World Championships, World Table Tennis has created a series of ultra-high-level tournaments to focus more attention on the sport called the “Smash.” And, in 2025, the first United States Smash will arrive in Las Vegas, Nevada from 3-13 July at the Orleans Arena.
Sorling noted that this event is not strictly about building momentum just for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles:
“We are coming there because of a strategy.
“First of all, during the pandemic, every table tennis table in the U.S. market was sold out. So table tennis a popular sport in the U.S., on the leisure level. So how can we make table tennis also more interesting on the elite level?

“From my perspective, we need to have table tennis in the schools and that is where we are working, and we elected to have in 2016, we came for the first time with a women’s World Cup to Philadelphia. When I was there, I had the privilege of giving some medals at the end of this Women’s World Cup and the CEO of [U.S.] table tennis at that time, he said something like ‘this is the one who took this event to here.’ So actually, when I got out to my transport, I got some fans coming after me, saying ‘thank you, you are the one!’ I mean I was not the one, there were many bringing it there.

“However, they were telling me, ‘oh, I have traveled from San Francisco to watch this event.’ That is when I realized that, wow, even if table tennis is not the biggest sport here, there is an appetite, because if you go from San Francisco to Philadelphia, you go across a big country.

“So, with that said, we went back to the drawing board and said, what can we do in the U.S.? So when the U.S. and China actually went together and were bidding for the world championships, back-to-back as an anniversary of the ‘ping-pong diplomacy’ 50 years [after], so we had Chengdu 2022 and Houston 2021, they were actually bidding, let’s say, together.
“So we said at that time that’s a perfect event to have there and we convinced the [ITTF Annual General Meeting] to vote them forward … But in 2021, luckily in Texas, during the pandemic, we could have spectators, so we had actually a very good [event] – spectators and the atmosphere – they really got it. It was a show and it was really very good.
“We had taken also learnings from the world championships in Houston, so the main table and how it is presented now in our high-level Smash events is actually inspired from the Houston event.”

So the U.S. has been a springboard of sports out of the pandemic for the ITTF, and Sorling added:
“In the last two years, in December, I have been to U.S. Open, [2023] in L.A. and [last] year in Las Vegas and it’s very crowded. There is, I can see, a big push and that there is also better results from the players, so we are actually investing in U.S. as one of our most important markets with big potential.

“We are happy that LA2028 takes place; but it’s not, let’s say, the reason [for the U.S. Smash]. We saw already in ‘16 when we went to Philadelphia, we have also very big Asian communities. Around L.A. there is a lot of China associations, but not only about China, but let’s say the platform, we know that we will have spectators there. We know that table tennis is a sport that is for everyone and we are also now trying to build up, to have events. Because what we do now with the Smash, it’s every year. It’s not coming there once, like the world championships, or the World Cup, but with the Smash we go back.

“So the plan is to go, we will have the Smash in Las Vegas and the only one challenge we have is we wanted to stay in Vegas or go to L.A.? That’s what we are discussing and we will try now and see how in July it is in Vegas, but it’s a priority market … it’s a market where we have a lot of potential.”
Sorling knows she has more campaigning ahead and will release her campaign manifesto in the coming week. But she is confident: “I think we have done a lot, but there is much more to do.”