2015 World TeamTennis season
The 2015 World TeamTennis season was the 40th season of the top professional team tennis league in the United States. Pursuant to a sponsorship agreement with Mylan N.V., the official name of the league was Mylan World TeamTennis in 2015. The Washington Kastles defeated the Austin Aces in the WTT Final to win their fifth consecutive King Trophy. Competition format. The 2015 World TeamTennis season included seven teams split into two conferences (Eastern and Western). The Eastern Conference had three teams, and the Western Conference had four teams. Each team played a 14-match regular-season  schedule with seven home and seven away matches. The top two teams in each conference qualified for the conference championship matches hosted by the first-place finishers. The conference champions met in the World TeamTennis Final hosted in 2015, by the Eastern Conference champion. A Western Conference champion that is a higher seed than an Eastern Conference champion would be treated as the "home" team in the WTT Final and have the right to determine order of play. The winner of the WTT Final was awarded the King Trophy. Franchise movement. On February 23, 2015, WTT announced that a new  ownership group had taken control of the Texas Wild and moved the team to Citrus Heights, California, renaming it the California Dream. Draft. Unlike previous seasons in which WTT conducted its Marquee Player Draft and its Roster Player Draft on different dates about one month apart, the league conducted a single draft at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden in Indian Wells, California on March 16, 2015. The order in which teams selected was based on the results the teams achieved in 2014, with weaker teams selecting earlier and stronger teams selecting later. The team with the worst regular-season record  selected first in each round, and the remaining nonplayoff teams followed in order based on their records. After the nonplayoff teams chose, the conference championship loser with the worse record of the two selected and was followed by the other conference championship loser. The WTT runner up selected after the conference championship losers, and the WTT champion selected last. The draft position for the relocated California Dream franchise was based on the results achieved as the Texas Wild. Each team could protect certain players from its 2014 roster. Marquee players or doubles teams and wildcard players could be protected if  they appeared in a match for the team in 2014. Exempt, roster and substitute players who appeared in at least three matches for the team in 2014, could also be protected. Teams could also protect players who qualified for protection based on match appearances in 2013, but were unable to play in 2014, due to injury. Teams holding the right to protect players could trade those rights before or during the draft. In another change from previous seasons, WTT eliminated its separate roster-exempt player draft. Instead, roster-exempt players were chosen in the roster player portion of the draft . Since roster-exempt players are not required to be full-time members of the team, the rule change makes it possible for a team to make four selections in the roster player portion of the draft and not have two male and two female full-time players. In such cases, these teams are permitted to make selections in additional rounds of the roster player draft until they have a complete roster. The selections made are shown in the tables below. Notes: Playoff match summaries. Eastern Conference Championship Match. July 30 at Kastles Stadium at Charles E. Smith Center, Washington, District  of Columbia: WASHINGTON KASTLES 25, Philadelphia Freedoms 9 Western Conference Championship Match. July 30 at Gregory Gymnasium, Austin, Texas: AUSTIN ACES 25, California Dream 14 WTT Final Match. August 2 at Kastles Stadium at the Charles E. Smith Center, Washington, District of Columbia: Washington Kastles 24, AUSTIN ACES 18 (extended play) Note: Individual statistical leaders. The tables below show the WTT players who had the highest regular-season winning percentages in each of the league's five events. Only players who played in at least 40% of the total number of games played by their team in a particular event  are eligible to be listed among the official WTT league leaders for that event. Individual honors. "Reference:" Team statistics. The tables below show the regular-season winning percentages of each team in each of the league's five events. Notes: Television. The 2015 season was the second year of a four-year television rights contract between WTT and ESPN, Inc. The WTT Final was telecast live on ESPN2. ESPN3 streamed the conference championship matches along with one match each night during the regular season. In a June 2, 2015 press release, WTT announced that the WTT Final would start at  11:30 am EDT on August 2, and would be streamed from the start by ESPN3. Live television coverage would begin on ESPN2 at 1:00 pm with the match already in progress. The start times for the conference championship matches would be 7:00 pm local time on Thursday July 30. Four regular-season matches were nationally televised on the Tennis Channel as well as on regional sports networks Altitude Sports and Entertainment, Comcast SportsNet affiliates, Mediacom Connections and MSG. These matches were as follows: Nationally televised matches were also streamed on ESPN3. In addition to the televised ones, the following regular -season matches were streamed exclusively on ESPN3: Sponsorship. On December 8, 2014, WTT announced that its title-sponsorship agreement with Mylan N.V. was extended for two more years through the 2017 season. As part of its partnership with WTT, Mylan will continue to sponsor events at which children meet with WTT players and are introduced to tennis, charitable events and the Mylan Aces program which allows each team to select a local charity for which it can earn money donated by Mylan by recording the most aces in the league on a given day during the regular season. 2015 World