Nov. 13 (Bloomberg) -- The women’s tennis tour has held “positive” talks with mobile telephone maker Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications Ltd. about renewing the sport’s biggest sponsorship deal, WTA Tour chief executive officer Stacey Allaster said.

“It’s been very good relationship,” Allaster, who is also chairman of the Tour, said in an interview from Bali. “We’ve been having positive talks to date.”

The six-year, $88-million agreement with Sony Ericsson is the biggest deal ever in tennis and in women’s professional sport. It will expire at the end of 2010.

“We are in discussing it now,” Aldo Liguori, corporate vice president and head of global communications at Sony Ericsson, said in an interview from Sweden. Sony Ericsson will have to make a decision by the end of the year.

The company last month posted a third-quarter loss of 164 million euros ($244 million), as sales fell 42 percent on tougher competition and tighter consumer spending.

“We are reviewing our own internal situation,” Liguori said. “We’re really looking at all the aspects. By next year, it will have been six years. Do we want to stay in sports? Do we want to stay in tennis? We are really reviewing where we are and where we want to go.”

The WTA Tour has a “good level of reserves so that the organization can go through a change in title sponsorship,” Allaster said.

The tour has $11 million in reserves and $35 million in cash, Allaster said. Its annual operational expenses are $23 million, on gross revenue of $50 million.

Prize-Money Boost

Since it became the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour in 2005, the women’s tennis circuit has boosted its prize money to $86 million from more than $57.8 million. About 4.8 million people attended women’s tennis events in 2008, compared with 4 million in 2004.

Sony Ericsson sold close to 97 million phones last year, compared with more than 42 million units in 2004, the year before it struck the deal with the WTA Tour.

Sony Ericsson’s association with the women’s tennis tour, and with its global brand ambassador, former Wimbledon champion Maria Sharapova, has made the brand more popular with a wider audience, according to Liguori.

“We were trying to shed the image we had at the time, which was very techy and very much for men,” Liguori said. “We were looking to communicate more to a female target audience. That’s been one of our biggest successes to date. We have become much more recognized around the world.”

The Women’s Tennis Association was founded in 1973 by 12- time Grand Slam singles champion Billie Jean King.

Thirty-eight years after King became the first female athlete to surpass the six-figure mark in season earnings, top- ranked Serena Williams this season made a record $6.5 million after winning the Australian Open, Wimbledon and the year-ending Sony Ericsson Championships in Doha.

To contact the reporter on this story: Danielle Rossingh at the London sports desk at drossingh@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: November 13, 2009 05:58 EST