Record entries for 2018 ITTF Challenge Nigeria Open: China, England, 25 others listed

With an appreciable improvement in quantity and quality, over 168 players from top table tennis playing nations beat the deadline of registration for the 2018 ITTF Challenge Nigeria Open scheduled for August 8 to 12 at the MoladeOkoya-Thomas Hall of Teslim Balogun Stadium, Lagos.

Countries like China, England, Denmark, Norway, Thailand, Slovenia, Iran and Mauritius will all be making their debut at the Africa’s elite tournament which is also the second highest prize money tournament in the ITTF Challenge Series.

Just like 2017, Europe dominates the list of countries with 13 nations heading to Lagos and this include Norway, Russia, Scotland, Denmark, England, Slovenia, Italy, Hungary, Romania, France, Finland, Luxembourg and Netherlands will be gracing the $46,000 prize money tournament.

China leads the Asia countries which include India, Iran and Thailand; South America has three led by Brazil while others are Colombia and Argentina.

Nigeria being one of the superpowers in Africa will lead the continent ,while others are Mauritius, Congo Brazzaville, Congo DRC, Ghana, Egypt and South Africa.

The2018 ITTF Challenge Nigeria Open will attract over 170 players which is an improvement to the 2017 edition which had 148 players.

Also, the Local Organising Committee (LOC) of the tournament has unveiled its official website for the biggest table tennis tournament in Africa.

According to the LOC, the website is www.ittfnigeriaopen.com is aimed to provide regular information on the tournament sanctioned by the world table tennis ruling body – International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF).

Aside the website, this year’s tournament would be live stream on twitter for its users across the globe.

Earlier this year, ITTF and Twitter announced a deal to live stream the ITTF’s 2018 Challenge Series events to a global audience to complement ITTF’s current streaming platform – itTV.

Nigeria Open being one of the ITTF Challenge Series events for this year will be live on Twitter handle all over the world.

This deal between ITTF and Twitter was cemented after a successful live stream of the Slovenia Open which attracted over 200,000 viewers on Twitter.

With this table tennis fans can now look forward to a live stream of the marquee ITTF tournaments live and free to Twitter users around the world.