WTA INSIDE LOOK: WTA LIKELY WON'T HAVE EVENT BACK AFTER 2004 LOSS OF MONEY, LOW ATTENDANCE ARE CITED.

Byline: Ramona Shelburne Staff Writer

On Sunday, Billy Jean King remarked it would take at least five years to develop the WTA Championships into a successful event in Los Angeles. Now we never might know if she was right.

After two dismal showings in Los Angeles, WTA Tour CEO Larry Scott announced at a news conference Monday that next year would be the final year the WTA Championships are held in Los Angeles.

Four hours after Scott said: ``We have a global sport and I think it is appropriate that we look to move it after three years,'' a WTA spokesman came back to ``clarify Scott's position.''

``He's just saying that the tour has received a lot of interest (in moving the event),'' the spokesman said.

Scott's initial statement came as a surprise to Tim Leiweke, CEO of Anschutz Entertainment Group, which owns and operates Staples Center.

``I would've preferred a little notice here but ... they've got to fix tennis because eventually what they're going to do is drive people like us out because this is not a way to run a business,'' said Leiweke, who was having dinner with top executives from Bank of America, the first-year sponsor of the WTA Championships, when he was first informed of Scott's comments.

AEG, which owns the event for another five years, and its marketing partner, Octagon Entertainment, had lost an amount Leiweke compared to the salary of ``a high-scoring forward in basketball or hockey'' in the two years the event has been held at Staples Center.

Should the tournament move after next year, AEG still would own the event and share in the profits or losses.

China, which hosted the men's Masters' Cup in Shanghai last year and is expecting a boost in international attention before the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, has been suggested as a possible host should the tournament move. Scott confirmed a Chinese delegation was in attendance this week, but added European cities and several other American cities have expressed interest.

After last year's dismal showing, in which there were crowds of 500 for daytime sessions featuring eventual-champion Clijsters, tournament organizers said they were pleased with the attendance this year despite the absence of Venus and Serena Williams and Lindsay Davenport.

Attendance was up 57 percent a session this year and players widely heralded the new round-robin format as a positive change.

All of this puts tournament director John Arrix in the position of marketing what essentially is a lame-duck tournament in Los Angeles next year. Arrix acknowledged his disappointment but said he would continue to ``communicate to tennis fans that this is a different type of event'' and build the exposure for the tournament. Arrix also said it always has been the plan to move the tournament after three years.

But it was just last year when Arrix had expressed a need for patience in growing the tournament.

The season-ending tournament was held at Madison Square Garden in New York from 1977 to 2000. In 2001 it was moved to Munich and attendance fell from 94,133 in 2000 to 36,500.

Ramona Shelburne, [phone]

ramona.shelburne(at)dailynews.com