US OPEN MEDIA CONFERENCE

August 14, 2024

Stacey Allaster

Dr. Brian Hainline

Lew Sherr

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the 2024 US Open pre-event press conference. We are incredibly excited that in just a few days we'll have three weeks of excitement ahead of us.

Joining me today are three individuals that are probably even more excited than I am, which is a tough thing to do. At this time I would like to introduce our three participants:

Dr. Brian Hainline, our chairman of the board and president for the USTA.

Stacey Allaster, the US Open tournament director, chief of professional tennis.

Lew Sherr, our executive director and CEO.

At this time I will turn it over to Brian Hainline.

DR. BRIAN HAINLINE: Good morning, everyone. Thank you in advance for your coverage of the 2024 US Open. We understand and we deeply appreciate the importance of the press in not only shaping this wonderful event, but also our glorious sport of tennis.

Before I get started, I do want to acknowledge, Stacey and Lew, it's a privilege for me to call both of you my colleagues, my mentors and my friends.

So the 2024 US Open, one of the most spectacular annual sporting events in the world. Last year, recall, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the US Open being the first major sporting event in the world to offer equal prize money to men and women, a societal milestone.

This year we're celebrating The Power of Tennis. We'll be celebrating The Power of Tennis in many ways, but importantly we're going to be doing so within the conceptual framework of the new Mission Statement of the USTA.

We introduced a new purpose-driven Mission Statement this spring. The former Mission Statement was to promote and develop the growth of tennis. Our new purpose-driven Mission Statement is growing tennis to inspire healthier people and communities everywhere. Growing tennis to inspire healthier people and communities everywhere.

Why do we believe so much in this Mission Statement and in The Power of Tennis? Well, quite frankly, tennis is the healthiest sport on the planet. That's right, tennis is the healthiest sport on the planet. We have plenty of data to unequivocally support that.

We know that tennis compared to all other sports and forms of exercise decreases your risk of death from all causes, including cardiovascular disease the most, but up to 50%. Tennis compared to all other sports and forms of exercise increases longevity the most by 9.7 years.

Imagine, you come to see me, I'm your physician, you're my patient. I say to you, I want you to take this pill maybe once a week, twice a week, three times a week or more if you would like. It has a few side effects: occasional sore knees, tennis elbow, low back pain, sometimes feeling that other people are cheating you unfairly. But the benefits are unbelievable: increasing your lifespan by up to 10 years while also improving your mental acuity, your psychological resilience, your balance, your speed, your power, your muscle mass, your bone mass, your coordination and your sense of social connection.

Tennis importantly is the sport of a lifetime. You can begin tennis at a young age, you can begin tennis at any age, including at age 90. It's a sport for all abilities: for our wheelchair players, for our adaptive players, for our able-bodied players. It's a sport that you can begin after an injury or when you're feeling great.

We believe that when you do begin this great sport of tennis, it's probably best to begin it on a shorter court with a larger, low-compression red ball. Now, you'll know the red ball when you see it because, well, it's red, at least in part. You can continue to play red ball tennis for the rest of your life.

What's an ideal short court? A pickleball court. They're great for playing red ball tennis, then you can progress to an orange ball, to a Green Dot, to what we'll be seeing at the US Open, the traditional yellow ball.

Tennis brings together communities and families, but you can have all of these different age groups actually playing together. Even though tennis, we call it an individual sport, for example when you're playing singles, it's also a team sport, playing doubles, playing on a high school or college team, playing in a league, playing with groups of families.

So yes, tennis inspires healthier people and communities everywhere.

One of the other themes of the US Open is our Be Open initiative, reaching out to communities of all persuasions. One of the things that we believe the USTA has an ethical responsibility to do is to reach out to all communities and to ensure that they have access to playing the healthiest sport on the planet.

The majority of tennis is played in public parks. We're doing everything in our power to be certain that the public park infrastructure allows everyone to play this great sport. That's our contribution to the important issue of the social determinance of health.

Finally, this year we're also celebrating the 30th anniversary of the USTA Foundation. Through the foundation we provide important after-school programming and academics and in sport through tennis across our great NJTL network, across our country. Our goal is that by 2026 we will be providing after-school programs through our NJTLs to over 200,000 underserved youth across our wonderful country.

So thank you again for being with us here today and for celebrating The Power of Tennis and the 2024 US Open. Thank you.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Brian.

Next up, Lew Sherr.

LEW SHERR: Thank you, Brian, for the inspiring message about the power of our game, what that can mean for tennis players throughout the world, but certainly here in the United States.

Good morning. Let me thank you in advance for your attention, for your coverage over the next three weeks. We are literally days away from starting the 2024 US Open. I could not be more excited. I know our entire staff is just chomping at the bit to get started on this tournament.

'23 was extraordinary for us. It was record-breaking in so many ways, in almost every possible regard. We saw the highest number of fans on-site we had ever experienced. We saw the highest broadcast viewership. We saw the highest digital engagement. We are absolutely expecting that trend to continue.

This year will be spectacular. We are excited at the prospect of hosting more than one million fans here on-site at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.

As Brian shared, the US Open is our opportunity to shine a lot on our sport and so many of the positive aspects for our sport. That is why we are continually striving to grow the event and to create a larger platform to amplify all of those positive messages, particularly our purpose: growing tennis, as Brian said, to inspire healthier people and communities everywhere. That's what gets us up in the morning, that's what drives us to build this event, to do what we do across the country. Tennis has been proven to be the world's healthiest sport.

As you now experienced, the US Open is truly a full three-week event. You'll be hearing more about the activities over the course of that three-week arc.

We are expecting over 200,000 fans to be here on-site during Fan Week, which we open the gates free of charge to the public. That will begin on Sunday night.

The reason our growth is so important is that we want to make sure that anyone who might be inspired to want to pick up a racquet and play the game has the opportunity to do so by experiencing the US Open and making sure that our gates and events are accessible to all.

The extraordinary growth that we've seen around the US Open in recent years truly mirrors what has been a magnificent growth in our sport from a participation standpoint across the country.

Participation in the United States since 2020 has increased by more than 33%. We currently project we will surpass 24 million players in the United States this year.

Earlier this year we announced an ambitious objective to make the United States the most popular tennis-playing nation in the world, which would equate to 10% of our population playing the sport, and set a goal of 35 million players by 2035.

Together with our 17 sections and thousands of volunteers around the country who direct and deliver the game at the local level, we are energized by the opportunity to deliver the sport the most effective way and to deliver the best player experiences possible to keep people in the game longer.

Our focus in that regard is clearly set on improving the infrastructure, the court infrastructure, here in America, and also recruiting more diverse and better training coaches across the nation, all of this while ensuring a safe environment for everyone.

We're excited to continue to use new ways to introduce the game, engage with players in the game, and reach new audiences and get them excited about tennis.

This year we are thrilled to be teaming up with Marvel to create a new original comic book that will feature not only the greatest celebrities and athletes in our sport, along with the Avenger characters, but also wheelchair athletes and some of the great American junior players here in the country. Those will be given away for free this year during the Fan Week.

We will also be featuring short court red ball tennis, allowing anyone to have an opportunity to enjoy the game more quickly, get into the sport faster, play with modified equipment, learn to play in a more effective way. Those who are desiring a more social experience, those who may be a little challenged from a mobility standpoint, we think there's a huge opportunity for red ball and short court play here in our country.

Finally the US Open gives us an amazing opportunity to celebrate the elite American athletes at the top echelon of our sport. This year, once again, we see American tennis in a great, great position, perhaps in the best position we've been in decades.

We already have 34 American players qualified into the main draw, and that's before the qualifying tournament. We have four men and we have four women each respectively in the ATP and WTA Tour rankings. We have eight women and seven men in the top 50 of both tour rankings. We have 15 women, nine men in the top 100.

Equally exciting, we also have eight boys and six girls currently ranked in the ITF junior top 50 rankings. 14 combined juniors in the top 50 exceeds any other nation. The future of American tennis certainly looks bright.

We're also thrilled that in Paris just weeks ago we were able to take home two medals in tennis, a silver and a bronze in men's doubles. Our congratulations go out to Rajeev Ram and Austin Krajicek winning the silver medal, bronze medalists Taylor Fritz and Tommy Paul. We also want to congratulate our captain and team coach Bob Bryan.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Lew.

Next up Stacey Allaster.

STACEY ALLASTER: Thank you.

As Brian and Lew have mentioned, we are very excited for this year's US Open. Spectacular Awaits is indeed just two days away when we will open up our doors and welcome the world's best tennis players to the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.

I'm going to start off by just talking about player compensation and building off of the press release last week.

On behalf of Brian and Lew and the entire USTA team, we're incredibly proud to lead and provide the players with the largest purse in tennis at $75 million. That represents a 15% increase over 2023.

For the last several years we have been very mindful as we distribute the player compensation to ensure that we're bringing the compensation down to the early rounds and also to the qualifying players.

In 2024, we've hit a real milestone in the main draw where the first round of singles, the player will earn $100,000, up from $81,000 in 2023. Last round of quallies, $52,000. For those athletes in the first round of qualifying, $25,000.

I think it's worth pointing out that the total purse for the qualifying is $7.3 million, making the US Open qualifying tournament the fifth largest prize money event in the United States.

I'd also like to call out that we will miss our wheelchair athletes this year at the 2024 US Open. We will be cheering them on at the Paris Paralympic Games. We didn't want them to miss out on their competition at this year's US Open. So we have provided the athletes with the equivalent amount of prize money they would have earned had we staged the 2024 US Open wheelchair championships. We thought that was important for those athletes as well.

As we look at the next three weeks of the US Open, the purpose of the US Open is to inspire a love for tennis and fuel the USTA mission that Brian and Lew have both talked about.

Without question, there are two sources of that inspiration, these athletes. What a great 2024 season we've had at the Australian, French Open, Wimbledon and now our turn at the US Open.

In addition, the New York fans are awesome. There's nothing like 24,000 fans in Arthur Ashe Stadium. They give so much energy back to the athletes, as well.

Just after this press event, the team is going to share with you a very comprehensive event overview, much of what I'm going to talk about in this next section. Let me just give you a little bit of advance and highlights especially around Fan Week that we are just so jazzed about.

This really is the USTA's invitation to all fans to come to the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center for free grounds admission. This does give us that opportunity to inspire and fuel the mission. I don't believe there's any other professional event at this level for nine days where fans can come on-site to the grounds all for free.

What's new? We have a variety of different events. I'll start off with those events that have the free admission to the grounds.

Two extra days to this Fan Week. Lew talked about 200,000. That's not what my goals say, but we'll probably exceed 200,000 as long as we get good weather.

The qualifying tournament will start on Monday this year, run through Thursday, weather permitting, and that gives ample time for the athletes to recover from that event and get through.

On Monday night, that is August 19th, our legends event will be back. We're going to play it in Arthur Ashe Stadium for the first time, presented by FAGE. James Blake, excited to have Garbine Muguruza, Tommy Haas and Bethanie Mattek-Sands.

I'll mostly really excited about the American Express Fan Experience that normally starts on Arthur Ashe Kids' Day is going to be on Monday, August 19th, the first day of Fan Week. That's new. We're really appreciative to American Express bringing that experience to all of the fans who are going to be with us during Fan Week.

The 27th annual Arthur Ashe Kids' Day will be back. We're going to move it back into Ashe. We've had such great fun with Dude Perfect. They will be the feature show again on that special day.

Also returning is the opportunity to fans to sit in the court-side seats in Arthur Ashe Stadium and see the greatest players practice. If you do have an opportunity to be on-site during Fan Week, come and watch the magic.

Last year I went out, there were 15,000 people in Arthur Ashe on a practice match. Novak was playing with Medvedev. They were practicing hard but also having a lot of fun. The fans really, really loved it.

Our partner at Wilson will distribute 10,000 free racquets during Fan Week. That, of course, is important that we get more racquets in kids' hands to play this great sport.

I'm going to transition to new signature events that are ticketed. Although they are ticketed, we've been very deliberate to ensure that they remain accessible. These events that I'm going to describe, the entry point on ticketing is $25 to $30, $50 tickets so that a family of four can come.

Let me start off with one that we are really excited about, a concert in Louis Armstrong with Dierks Bentley. That will be, again, the first event of our Fan Week schedule.

Tuesday night, August 19th, almost like a Marvel event, our Mixed Madness presented by IHG Hotels with some real dynamic duos: Coco and Ben, Naomi and Nick Kyrgios. Everybody loves Nick. Great to see him back on our courts. Taylor and Ariana. And the famous couple Paula Badosa and Stefanos Tsitsipas.

August 21, the US Open Stars of the Open Presented by Chase. This will feature the champions of the past and the champions of today. This is the not-to-be-missed event. Let me give you some insight why.

We'll have men's doubles. Carlos will play with Agassi. Novak is going to play with Johnny Mack. I can tell you that both Carlos and Novak immediately said yes when I went to them and said, Would you like to play in this event? They are excited to have the opportunity to share Arthur Ashe Stadium with Agassi and Johnny Mack.

Mixed doubles, this is new, you're hearing it for the first time. Juan Martin del Potro will be back on court, he will play with Gabriela Sabatini, versus our own Andy Roddick and the great Venus Williams. We'll have women's doubles as well. Jessica Pegula will star in that part of the show. We're just working on finalizing the rest of the players.

On Thursday night, the 22nd, we'll see the return of Flavors of the US Open Presented by Dobel. That gives our fans an opportunity to sample the great food from our celebrity chefs that's on offer during the US Open.

Three events that I just mentioned, we're really excited that a portion of the tickets for all those events will go to benefit our USTA Foundation on its 30th anniversary.

Friday night, August 23rd, we'll have our Media Day. Media Day we'll also have our Fan Facing, which is pretty fun. Players are still practicing, the players are being interviewed, you get some jostling back and forth. That's a fun element.

At night, the South Plaza will turn into a block party with legendary artist and DJ D-Nice. It's a free event. Fans will just need to get their tickets on Ticketmaster.

Lastly, before I just highlight a few of the new elements of the competition, I'd like to highlight again a first-ever for us, a Finals Weekend FanFest. Louis Armstrong will be transformed into a viewing party for the men's and women's finals. The cost to get in $25. Rain or shine now. We've had some finals events on the grounds, but sometimes we get some rain, so now we can guarantee all those fans in Louis Armstrong to come and experience the finals. We're looking forward to that.

Last, to keep the party going, after the women's final, we'll have a Finals Fest After Party in conjunction with Avant Gardener and the Brooklyn Mirage, and we'll host an EDM. It has been a learning experience for me. Electric dance music, for those that don't know. We will feature Grammy nominated Galantis. Again, tickets are $25.

So with all of that, we will have tennis. We will have 894 matches.

Let me just share a couple of the new policies and initiatives within the competition. Might be on everyone's mind which ball will the women use. We will use the Wilson ball Regular Duty. That decision was made by the WTA, its players through a survey, and the players council. That ball will be on offer. The female athletes have been playing with the Wilson Regular Duty ball all summer in the lead-up events to the US Open.

Fan movement. We've always had free movement in the upper stands of Arthur Ashe, our stadiums, in the outer courts. 2024 we will introduce controlled movement in all of our stadiums. Each stadium is different. What we will implement is that fans will be allowed to move in between games versus in the past in between changeovers. That will be new. It will be new for everyone. We'll find our way through it. But we think this is an important addition to the fan experience at the US Open.

Our roof policy. This policy has been evolved based on last year's extreme heat. Last year you might have noticed we started to partially close the roof for shade during those hot days in the last week of main. We've now made it a policy so the athletes will know when the roof will and will not open and chose. Depending upon the extreme heat, the referee will have the ability to close the roof, partially shade the court before the match or at the end of a set. The roof will only be closed in the threat of inclement weather or if it's raining.

Lastly, the expansion of utilizing video review. We had five courts last year. This year we've expanded to eight courts. That now covers almost 75% to 80% of the singles matches and up to 50% of the doubles.

In addition, we will have roaming tablets so that in the event there is a default situation on any match court of the main draw, the referee or a Grand Slam supervisor will be able to go on court, have the tablet with them to review the situation of a default code. We think that's really important in those really crucial moments during the competition.

Finally late-night match policy. We've had late matches here. We will still have late matches here. We are now defining a policy.

So in the event that we have the second match of the evening on Ashe or the last match on Armstrong, if those matches have not gone on by 11:15 p.m., the referee will have the discretion to move the match. That's going to depend on many variables, like do we have the broadcast team ready, do we have a ball crew, so forth. But we're defining that it's a possibility. The athletes will know that in the event that we do get to that position, then the referee will make that decision.

I'll just finish off with thanking you for everything that you will do to help us promote the US Open in the next three weeks. If there's anything that myself and our team, particularly our coms team, can do to help support you, please let us know. We're always here to serve. Thank you.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Stacey.

At this time we'll turn it over to the Q&A portion.

Q. I think you said some pretty interesting things at the beginning, the changing of your Mission Statement, talking about the red ball game. How much of this is you guys thinking you need to tell people how great your sport is, though there's many people who know what it is, a reaction to the growing number of pickleball courts that are taking over some tennis courts recreationally?

DR. BRIAN HAINLINE: Well, given the data we have, when you look at the USTA as the national governing body of tennis, being the national governing body, you do have ethical responsibilities. Lew mentioned safe play and safety. But getting this message out is so critically important.

With pickleball, it's not necessarily an either/or. Yes, it's developed incredibly powerfully at a grassroots level. We are piloting over 200 different studies across the country of introducing red ball on pickleball courts and other short courts.

Look, I mean, I play tennis on public courts still. I grew up on public courts. Quite frankly, it's obnoxious to hear that pickleball noise. With red ball, it's just a beautiful sound. When you look at the forehand of red ball tennis, you can do it in 10 different ways. In pickleball there's just five strokes. Not to put it down, but compared to tennis, seriously...

Also you take that data, I mentioned the social derterminance of health, getting the word out to all communities.

Look, the United States has a problem right now with physical illiteracy and obesity. Given what we know about tennis, as Lew mentioned the initiatives of really making certain that the infrastructure is out there for all public courts, yeah, we're taking all of that data together and saying, Look, it's time for us to really move to spread the word and get the word out about the magic of our game.

Q. I have a question about the winner last year, Coco Gauff. Since this, have you seen the Coco effect coming with young black tennis players coming to clubs? Have you seen a consequence of Coco's title on American tennis?

LEW SHERR: Look, we are hugely excited about what Coco Gauff brings to the sport of tennis. She has energized fans around the world. She has energized American kids, white and players of color.

The U.S. is a bit different. I will say while Coco's celebrity is now on par with many of the top athletes, I think you saw the beginning of the Olympics, she was paired with LeBron James bearing the flag for the American team.

Here in the United States, I think the impact of athletic performance maybe is a little different than what you might see in other countries. Emma Raducanu winning the US Open had a big impact on that nation. We've had tremendous athletes of color, Venus Williams, Serena Williams. We're very proud of the legacy in our sport. Frances Tiafoe as well on the men's side. Starting with the building we're in, Arthur Ashe Stadium. There's a tremendous history here in our country.

More importantly, we're excited about all of the young Americans. Having American players performing at the top of the sport inspires people to want to play, but we also know that American kids are energized by Carlos, by Iga.

One of the great things about the US Open, we can showcase the best players in the world for all of our fans. As Stacey mentioned, particularly during Fan Week, we give them an opportunity to get up close in a way you never could at another event.

Q. Basically just wanted to ask, probably more a question for Stacey, I just wanted to ask if you still have confidence in the electronic line calling system. Obviously there's been a couple of issues the last few weeks for that in relation to the match with Frances and Taylor last night. What contingencies are in place as a tournament if there are problems with the system?

STACEY ALLASTER: There's certainly a redundancy system built into automated line calling, number one. If the system were to go down, we still could do it the old-fashioned way and have the chair umpire call.

We have a significant amount of confidence in the system. We introduced automated line calling in 2020. We have not had any major issues in the past.

So it's a technology system. It's 98% correct. We do know previously when we used line umpires, the line umpires were 75%. With any technology there could be a few glitches, but we have a lot of confidence in the system.

Q. Dr. Hainline, in your opening remarks you talked a little bit about last year's theme versus this year's theme, the health benefits of tennis. What are some of the ways that you've seen The Power of Tennis personally in action? What are you hoping that fans on-site over the next three weeks take away from experiencing that theme?

DR. BRIAN HAINLINE: I think personally, I'm a former competitive player. I was a scholarship player at the University of Notre Dame. I'm actually still competing. So tennis has personally shaped my life, in many ways has saved my life. That's why I want to give back to the sport.

But we're just hoping with this theme, The Power of Tennis, the new Mission Statement, you'll see all sorts of signs around, and the media helping us. I just think we haven't gotten the word out as well as we could of how great this sport really is.

You have so many youth sports. Sadly tennis is not one of the top five youth sports that's being played. We would like to see it really be in the top three, to have our greatest athletes playing the healthiest sport.

We need to get the message out to parents. We need to get the message out within the park system to park directors that they have the programs in place to get tennis going.

This is a multifaceted plan that Lew is overseeing with his staff and senior leadership team. We're just hoping this year that the message from the Open is so powerful that it is going to really lead to more of a revolution, if you will, in everyone's mind that they should get out and play tennis.

I stressed earlier about red ball tennis. Yeah, I made a little joke about pickleball. When you think about red ball tennis, when you actually play it, it's a great game. It's an entry level game for anyone. Someone who is 80 years old, they realize now that they have to do something for their coordination or they're going to fall and maybe fracture their hip. Getting out and playing red ball tennis is ideal.

We're going to be emphasizing that, it's for all ages, all abilities. That's just consistent with what the USTA is all about, what we are as a Be Open sport.

STACEY ALLASTER: Maybe we could get the media here to do a red ball tournament behind Stadium 17 (smiling).

Q. Every year the players talk about the speed of the court. My question is, how fast is the court playing this year? Who decides that? What are the factors that go into that decision?

STACEY ALLASTER: I'll take that one.

We aim for the court pace rating to be medium fast. Medium fast, per the ITF, is anywhere from 41 to 44. All 17 courts have been resurfaced. The average CPR right now is 42. It's where we like it to be at the start of the tournament so that as we ease into it, it gets closer to the end.

We take feedback from players. We take feedback from player development. We know that that speed of court gives us that right balance with the style of play. It's been successful.

That's what goes into those decisions and where we sit today as we get ready for the first balls to be hit.

Q. It is very important for me to hear that you guys are talking about ethical, social responsibility and community. What kind of plans more specific about helping the communities and the neighborhoods around the US Open, Corona, Flushing, that after the pandemic are suffering a lot of health problems, the deterioration of the quality of life?

LEW SHERR: Thank you for the question. It's an important one.

Look, we are an organization that, as Brian mentioned, is focused on a purpose. That purpose links improving individual health and strengthening and improving communities, right? I think that goes right to your question.

This event is played here every year. All of the funds generated off this event are reinvested back into growing the sport. A portion of that growing the sport is court refurbishments, parks and rec, supporting after-school programs through our foundation.

We're heavily involved in the Queens community. Additionally, when the lights turn off during the US Open, this facility is a public park, right? Our courts are accessible to the public. Brian is a local resident. I'm in Florida. I think you can probably speak to this. These are some of the least expensive courts you can play on in New York City. That's by design. We run camps for kids and things like that.

Fan Week itself is geared to be an invitation to the Queens community in particular to come out and participate. There's actually a Queens Day within Fan Week.

Having an impact in this community is important. I'll separate that from the economic impact of the event, which for New York generates more than $1.2 billion of economic activity around the so US Open.

The city certainly benefits from that, Queens benefits from that, the city also benefits from their portion of the revenues that are generated through this event.

I think the operation of this facility as a park and the reinvestments that we make back into court refurbishments, school program, our national junior tennis and learning programs, after-school programs, which again are all represented here in Queens as well.

Q. As you'll know, our national hard court championships just finished. The winners in Kalamazoo and San Diego received wild cards into the main draw of the US Open. As happens every year, there's a lot of conversation around will the kids take the money, will they maintain their NCAA eligibility. My question is, if the players opt out of accepting the money to maintain their eligibility to play in college, what happens to that money?

STACEY ALLASTER: Right now the money just goes back into the big expense budget of the US Open. Dr. Hainline can speak to NCAA rules. We have been speaking to the NCAA, if that money could be set aside against some of their expenses. I don't have resolution on that today, but we have been speaking to the NCAA about doing that.

I should also note that these athletes also get a lot of support from our player development. That definitely goes into the conversation, as well.

Q. About sports betting sponsorships. We've seen quite a lot of sports betting sponsors and logos at the ATP and the WTA 1000 tournaments. That's not allowed at the majors. We've seen odds on television, et cetera. My question is, how does the accessibility and the ease of betting on tennis enhance the fan experience, in your opinion?

LEW SHERR: A really interesting question. Just to clarify, sports betting sponsorship is permitted here at the majors. All of the events in tennis operate by the same rules. Whether you're a 1000, whether you're a Grand Slam, a 250 or 500, the rules are no different in terms of sponsorship and how we integrate with the sports betting marketplace.

Tennis is the second most wagered sport on the planet. We have seen instances where that betting activity certainly leads to greater engagement and interest and more following in our events and the like.

We right now are focused more on the integrity aspect of the betting category and making sure that we are working closely with the tennis integrity group to make sure we're tracking all of that wagering activity, that we're supplying the data in the appropriate ways so it can't be manipulated and it can be authenticated and validated.

What we are seeing in other sports, certainly here in the United States, is sports wagering creates more interest, more fandom in the game. Obviously that needs to be done responsibly.

I think you're also seeing we're a global event. Certainly nations in Europe are much further along in their evolution with sports betting, where they've sort of pulled back a little bit. I think the feeling was they may have gone too far, that the sports books were so prevalent, not just on the kits, in every commercial break, every promotional spot, so you've seen a little more moderation happening there.

We feel good about where we sit right now. Certainly for the sport of tennis we are seeing more engagement. Brian mentioned tennis is not in the top five in the popularity of sports. Even in the United States, tennis is the fourth most wagered sport in the country.

THE MODERATOR: With that we conclude today's press conference. Thank you for taking part, all of you in attendance, for being part of the call today.