Eye-watering Vienna Open fee requested by Carlos Alcaraz confirmed as tournament director calls adding Spaniard too expensive

Until his injury status was confirmed, Carlos Alcaraz was due to play Swiss Indoors Basel over the next week. But organisers of the Vienna Open were seemingly priced out of him playing their tournament.

The draw confirmed on Saturday sees Stefanos Tsitsipas, Ben Shelton, Alexander Zverev and Daniil Medvedev among top names in one of the best ATP 500 tournaments on paper of the season.

But Alcaraz will not be a part of that. The tournament director preferred 'density' according to Austrian newspaper De Standard with more depth for the money they are paying and that they tried signing the Spaniard up, but were put off by appearance fees.

According to Straka, he was charging upwards of 750,000 euros making him too expensive and meaning that the Vienna Open went with the less is more model attracting players more on the periphery outside of Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic who likely will attract less.

This means also that it is more likely to be a success with Stefanos Tsitsipas - Dominic Thiem, Jannik Sinner - Ben Shelton and Daniil Medvedev - Arthur Fils to name but a few picked out of the first round.

Likely a lot less of those names would have been in Vienna had they paid the fees asked for and it shows in Alcaraz' case the high price tournaments have to pay for his signature especially at the end of a long season.