The 6 Kings Slam: Saudi Arabia offers record prize money to Sinner, Alcaraz & Co

At worst, they will have played a scant two hours to collect $1.5 million. Or a few more hours to cut a cheque for 6 million, destined for the winner. Either way, the three-day Saudi blitz by the world tennis champions will go down in history as the highest paid tournament ever. It is not the latest spectacular stunt on the Atp circuit, which in fact does not award a single point in the competition. It is just a luxury exhibition financed by the Saudi Kingdom to the tune of gold.

This is Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman's new foray into the great circus of professional sport after Formula 1, football and golf. This is not the first time in tennis as Saudi Arabia has since last year been hosting the Next Gen Atp Finals in Jeddah, inherited from Milan, where the best eight under-21 tennis players compete - again without earning points. And from next November also the Women's Wta Finals.

The competition scheduled from 16 to 19 October is called 6 Kings Slam: on stage will be Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz, Daniil Medvedev, Novak Djokovic, Rafa Nadal and Holger Rune. The elite of tennis past, present and future, with few defections. Of the top five, only Alexander Zverev is missing, while the only participant outside the top ten in the rankings - apart from Nadal who is about to retire - is Dane Rune, who in the event of a final victory would collect more than half of all the prize money he has earned so far in his career (just over 10 million dollars).

The 'money prize' is really out of the ordinary. In the two highest paid official tournaments of the year - Wimbledon and the Us Open - the winner gets a cheque for 3.6 million dollars, while Roland Garros offers a prize of 2.7 million and the Australian Open 2.2 million. Riyadh's (unofficial) 6 million represents another order of magnitude. Only the ATP Finals come close with the $4.8 million reserved for the winner, provided, however, that he finishes the competition undefeated, otherwise he has to 'settle' for $2.2 million. Among the exhibitions, the only one that holds its own is the Laver Cup, which has a prize money of $2.25 million to be divided among the 12 players of Team Europe and World.

That this is a colossal event for which the Wahhabi kingdom spared no expense was clear from the competition launch trailer. A Hollywood-style video featuring Alcaraz as a steel robot, Sinner as a renaissance lord, Rune disguised as a Viking, Medvedev riding a bear, Nadal as a gladiator and finally Djokovic in a hooded suit surrounded by wolves and snow. The five-minute short film was directed by the Los Perez production company in Los Angeles and is high-tech.