The Fan Bar is the entry point to VIP hospitality at the Grand Prix Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, and it is priced to welcome. At €198pp for a quarterfinal Friday evening or €234pp for semifinals Saturday and finals Sunday (taxes included), this is one of the most accessible VIP tennis experiences on the European indoor calendar. What you get for it is generous.

Your seat is in the Carré Or, the Gold Square, the premium seating category in the arena. Your dedicated hospitality space is at the Fiducial Asteria, the entertainment complex right next to Centre Court. The proximity is the key detail: you are not in a distant lounge watching on a screen and then walking five minutes to reach your seat. You are right there. The hospitality space and the court exist side by side, and you move between them in moments.

Cocktail catering and drinks are included in the price. On Friday and Saturday evenings, the space transforms after the last match into an after party with DJ entertainment and a cash bar, open to all VIP guests. The tournament has designed this as a social evening as much as a sporting one, and the after party is where the two merge. For groups of friends, couples, or professionals who want the VIP experience with energy and atmosphere rather than corporate formality, the Fan Bar is exactly the right fit.

The Grand Prix Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes is a brand new tournament. The LDLC Arena has never hosted professional tennis before, and the crowd will be discovering the sport in this venue for the first time. There is a particular energy to a first edition, a collective sense of occasion and discovery, that established tournaments sometimes outgrow. Being in the building for this moment, with Monfils playing what may be one of his final tour events and Wawrinka doing the same, with Humbert and Vacherot representing the next generation of French tennis, is a distinctive way to experience it.

Parking is included at one space per three tickets purchased, which is a slightly better ratio than the higher tiers.

Lyon in late October is beautiful. The light turns golden, the leaves along the Rhône are at their peak, and the city's famous bouchons (the small, family-run Lyonnaise restaurants that define the local food culture) are serving the hearty autumn dishes that made this city the gastronomic capital of France. An evening at the Fan Bar followed by dinner in Vieux Lyon is a complete night out.

Enquire through experience.tennis for availability and booking.