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BNP PARIBAS WTA FINALS SINGAPORE

October 23, 2017

Kallang, Singapore

SAP/WTA Press Conference

JENNI LEWIS

MICKY LAWLER

LINDSAY DAVENPORT

HEATHER BOWLER: Welcome. Good afternoon. I just wanted to introduce the panel very quickly. We obviously have Lindsay Davenport who needs no introduction, tennis legend; Micky Lawler, president of WTA; and Jenni Lewis, head of tennis technology for SAP.

Just before I hand it over to Jenni, I want to say SAP, our longstanding partner with the WTA, stands side by side with us in our digital transformation, and not only do they know technology but they really know our sport and they listen to us and always bring the right solution to the table.

So with no further ado, I will hand it over to Jenni Lewis who will tell you more.

JENNI LEWIS: Perfect. Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome. Thank you for coming in and spending your time. For those of you who know me know I cannot talk and sit down, so I will stand up for my part of the presentation. I will sit down for the panel.

So thank you very much. As Heather mentioned, we are super excited to have renewed our partnership with the WTA. I was very lucky to stand in the room next door back in 2014 when we made our first technology announcement as being part of the WTA/SAP innovation. I'm super excited that I still get to stand in front of you. The team has grown greatly over the years.

I'm going to run a little video that kind of talks a little bit about what we have been doing and what we are really looking forward to doing in the future.

(Video Presentation.)

JENNI LEWIS: So as I mentioned, this is a partnership, and it is a true partnership. When SAP goes to work in the market looking for partners, we look for partners who are really wanting to innovate with us, and we were very excited that we were able to, you know, become a partner of the WTA back in 2013. We look forward to now we have renewed to an extended relationship together.

I'm going to hand it over to the best doubles partner in the business. I'm going to hand it over to Micky Lawler for some remarks, and then I will come back and show you the next phase of the technology that we are looking to launch here with your help.

Thank you, Micky.

MICKY LAWLER: Thank you. See, she's the technology queen because her microphone is built into her shirt.

So 2013 was our lucky year. Normally 13 is unlucky, but it was our lucky year because we started working together with SAP. In general, when the WTA looks to work with a partner, we take very seriously our job to deliver a lot of value to that partner and to make it a two-way street.

In the age of digital transformation, obviously technology plays a major role in our lives in everything we touch and everything we do in how we fly, how we drive, how we get treated by doctors. So tennis could not be left behind.

As a sports entertainment platform, we needed to be able to get ahead of the game in order to be appealing to today's fan who has a shorter attention span, who is very technology driven, and as well to our players who are younger and younger and are used to being able to live in that technology-driven world.

SAP, as you know, is a global market leader in enterprise and business software. They are able to optimize systems for businesses large and small, from the back room to the boardroom, and they are able to deliver the competitive edge to all sorts of businesses and enable these businesses to get ahead and stay ahead.

The same for the WTA. SAP has been tremendous. And if you see our partnership as a sort of ladder or a stairway to heaven -- I just came up with that.

JENNI LEWIS: That's great. We'll go with it.

MICKY LAWLER: Stairway to heaven (smiling).

At first when we signed the partnership we had to do a lot of due diligence to really understand how we could ease into this digital transformation. As you know, tennis is a very traditional sport, and to bring change into a sport like tennis is never easy. Even though the players are younger, the coaches are not that younger, and they are, no, we don't like on-court coaching, we don't do this, we don't do that.

So they sat there during the matches taking notes, and we had to prove to them that actually there was a lot to gain from this technology.

So SAP spent an enormous amount of time and resources perfecting the technology, making sure that the players would see a lot of value in being able to analyze this blueprint of what was going on live in real-time during their match quickly, and also enable the coaches to go much deeper than their traditional notetaking and to take this many levels higher and to really be able to help the player much more efficiently.

So data is the new gold, as you know, and it equals information. So put this together. So we did all of this work in '13/'14. In '15 we launched the live, on-court coaching app, and we piloted six tournaments. Then in 2016 it expanded to 12 tournaments. This year we were able to launch 20-plus tournaments, because now we have access to all of the tournaments that have Hawk-Eye. And now the players, it's funny, because in four years the players look back and they say, How did we ever live without this?

So with the players playing the most important role in tennis and coaching being very close to the players, who are the second-most important people and the stakeholders in tennis? The media. The media are the storytellers of what happens in our world, and I can tell you that I personally started my career in media, so I know very well how important you all are to our sport, to the growth of our sport, to our players and our tournaments.

Without you, there would be no women's professional tennis. So it was very important to SAP and the WTA to be able to launch the next phase and to provide to you the service of being able to facilitate your job, to make it as accurate as possible to give you live insights, and just to get the tennis storytelling to new heights and new dimensions.

So we are very, very happy. And is it my job to announce the surprise?

JENNI LEWIS: I would like you to announce the surprise, Micky. That would be awesome.

MICKY LAWLER: We have a big surprise for you today, and that is that SAP and the WTA are launching the new WTA Tennis Media Analytics Program.

Is that the official name? You know what we mean.

So, with that, I will hand it over to --

JENNI LEWIS: Hand it back to me, yes, for the moment. So thank you very much, Micky.

So as Micky took you through, the journey that we are now going to be on with you, and as we always said when we became a partner, that we wanted to look at doing this in phases, exactly the same way as we approached the coaching technology, where we spent the time actually out on the road -- and it's kind of scary to hear those numbers, the 6, the 12, and the 25, now I know why we are so tired at this time of the year, but it's been awesome to be part of this journey.

There are a lot of very familiar faces for me in this room, the media that have been very important to us as we go through.

So what we are going to show you today is the prototype, okay? So we have launched -- and it will be available to all of you here in Singapore as a preview -- the foundation of what will become the SAP Tennis Analytics for media that you will have access to to be able to get real-time analytics as a match is happening. We are not the experts. You are the experts. What my team will be looking to do with you this week is as the matches are running, you'll have access to the foundation of what we want to do.

We are going to launch this at the beginning of the 2018 season. My developers are very keen to get your feedback. My designers are even more keen to get your feedback. I actually have two designers with me here in Singapore who are going to make themselves available to sit down with you guys and really try to understand what is the best way for us to present the data to you, knowing that all of you write in different ways.

Some of you will be interested in getting some prematch information. Some of you will be interested in getting live information whilst you're blogging, or courtside looking for trends that are happening, and most importantly at the end of the match looking for the more detailed analysis that you're able to tell.

The point of what we're trying to do is to give you the context of what we are looking at. So instead of seeing a stat in isolation, then trying to work out what does that mean, how do I draw out more information from that, what we are trying to do is allow the computer to help you do that.

So we are on the beginning of what will be a very hopefully fun journey but also a journey that we will take together. We will do a series of workshops throughout the week, so myself and the designers will be available in the media center every day to sit down with you and really get your feedback.

So some of what I'm going to show you today is real product that is running right now. Some of it is how we are thinking we want to take the design. We don't want to build something that you don't want to use, and that's exactly what we did with the coaches and the players, where SAP is taking the approach, as we do across all our businesses, design thinking concepts are super important to us, is interview the people who are going to use the software as opposed to us giving you something and saying, This is what we want to give you, go with it.

We actually want to engage with you. Please, feel free, I have broad shoulders, I take criticism as well as praise, so please make sure you do take the time this week to join us, sit down with the designers and sit down with my team and really kind of give us your feedback.

Let's have a look at what we've got to show you. The first thing we will look at here is we have decided to take a slightly different approach. Normally it's all about the player, you know, coming in via the player profile, understanding that. What we have decided to do is look at this more from a tournament point of view. So the idea here is that when you come into the media portal, you actually see the list of tournaments that are currently running live and also, with your feedback, also some archived tournaments. I will show you a couple of different samples.

Obviously I'm looking here at, first looking at what's going on here in Singapore, and we are lucky enough that we have had matches that have been played here to give you an idea of what this will look like.

There are three pieces to the puzzle at the moment. I will start with the performance piece. What we are looking to do here is giving you, before the tournament starts, some very simple overview information about the tournament itself. The plan with this will be before the draw is announced, this particular screen becomes available. Now, this is one of the screens that we actually have done some design work on, and I'm going to show you a little bit more detail on that in a second. From here you get the standard type of information. Then as the tournament starts, what we then look at doing is going into the match stats area, and actually then starting to break down the actual field itself.

So if we scroll through this screen, what we can see is here in Singapore it's very easy for us to break down the player field because there are just eight players. Obviously on a larger tournament we are breaking that down and giving you information.

This will all update live, okay? So as players lose, they will disappear from this list, so you know at any point in time how many nationalities are left, how many ranked players are left, how many left/right handers, all of that type of information.

So at the moment we have decided to go with when the match is finished, okay? Obviously it's real-time. If you say to us over the next couple of weeks that actually we'd like this to be updating as matches are happening, all of these numbers will update as the match happens, as well. At the moment, we have set it to as soon as the match is finished, the match statistics flow into this screen.

So again, we look forward to getting some feedback from you. What we also decided to be able to do here was break down a little further into giving you more detail around the actual players that are left in the field, okay?

So this particular screen at the moment allows you to look at this data in lots of different ways. In a normal tournament, it would be who's left in the field? Obviously here in Singapore while we are in round robin, all the players are still here until we get to the semifinals. It then breaks it down with who is the best performer within the tournament all the way through to the season stuff. So what we see is when we look at the season, this is real-time, okay? So in a sense, again, is that these numbers will update. What we are looking at doing is -- flipping to the other screen, this is the prototype kind of thing of what we are looking at doing.

So this information can be displayed in a couple of different ways. So the designers have actually sort of been playing around a little bit in trying to get you this information. The key thing that we are looking at doing here for you in the season breakdown is indicating when there are players still left in the field. So you go into the season, you can actually see if the player is actually playing in this event.

We all know during the season there is quite often multiple tournaments running in one week. This will reflect that, okay?

So if you're looking to write a story about who today -- and we had that the other day when we had our two biggest aces players playing at the same time, and they were going backwards and forwards, who was going to be the leader in the aces, this was keeping track of that as soon as the matches were done, allowing you to see that kind of thing.

Again, you're writing a story either about the season or the individual event, you can actually choose to do that. The whole point of this is to give you the information that you need as you need it.

As I mentioned, we have kind of been playing around a little bit with some of the designs. In this particular case, we can see it's the same screen that you have access to here today. My guys have kind of been playing around with it. As I said, for those of you who have a design eye and more of you potentially in print who are looking for screens potentially that you can copy into stories and things likes that, we'd really like to get your feedback on the textual based versus the prettier stuff.

Tim, the designer who did all this stuff, arrives in Singapore tonight. He's super excited to talk to all of you. He's a mad tennis nut like I am. It's always good to bring that back in.

In this particular case, we start off with the nice, basic, easy things. What we are now looking at also wanting to do is talk about the alerting capability. So this particular piece of technology is available when an event is live, when a match is live.

So there is no matches going on center court, so I'm going to actually pull up a match from Brisbane earlier in the year so you get an idea of what it would look like. I will go into Brisbane, and I will go into the alerting area.

So the point of this will be is it will show you all matches that are live. You can select any match to drill into. Then it gives us the breakdown of this information.

What we wanted to do here is if you weren't sure what the story could be, okay? The whole point of this is that all the stats are available to you as soon as a player reaches the threshold, i.e., they have done better than they normally do. What would happen is an alert would be triggered. In this particular case, you can see we have gone for something simple. She served more aces than she normally does from a year-to-date point of view. Automatically it flags that and tells you that that's actually happening.

What you can also see is across all the other stats these little indicators underneath indicate that an alert has been triggered, so you don't actually have to be watching it. As soon as the trigger happens, it will bring it to your attention.

As this grows out, machine learning is going to become part of this, and we can start to help you frame the story of a player changing over time, okay? And in the sense that as the computer gets more and more information, it can actually suggest to you what you should watch, okay? Because the trend we are actually seeing that this particular player has changed a serving pattern and therefore the numbers are different. Over time, this will continue to grow, and obviously with your feedback, we will change that.

Today we are launching with three particular capabilities. It's tracking, in this case, year-or-date overall, their career, and the surface, which is most relevant to what they are playing on. What I really look forward to sitting down with you guys are, we came up with 25 additional benchmarks that we could track. What we would love from you guys is are those 25 the right ones, okay, or do you want us to build a whole series of new ones for you to be able to track?

Ultimately what will happen when we launch this in January is you will have an option where you click benchmark, and you will choose the three comparison stats that you want to actually look at. You will always have what's happening in the current match. You can then choose, do you want to just look at when she plays Top 10 players, do you want to just look at indoor events, do you want to look at a series of couple of seasons as opposed to one season. There is a whole series of different scenarios you're able to select.

From here this then allows us to come in and see and happen live. What you will see tonight when the match starts, it's keeping track of the score. In the full format of a tournament, it also will list every single match that is happening right now. So somewhere like Miami or Brisbane International where we've got lots of matches going on, all of those matches will be listed across the top, and again, if an alert is met by any of those players, that will be brought to your attention and you can quickly jump between, okay?

So we are hoping that this gives you information, gives you the context of information, but more importantly is going to give you the choice of what you want to look at. As opposed to trying to scroll through heaps and heaps and heaps of statistics looking for something, the computer will hopefully start to alert you to that. And as I said, over time, this will change with machine learning as we start to feed in more information.

What I'm super interested in finding out from this group is do you also want to start writing about the environment? Should we be tracking time of day, conditions, and all that type of stuff for you, as well? The players and the coaches haven't asked us for that because they go, We can't control when we play, so I don't want to know did I play better in the day than I play in the evening? Because I have no control over that.

You, as storytellers, may want to know that type of information. So do we need to also be bringing in all the other factors that we have available to us about schedules, time of day, you know, heat, altitude, all those kinds of things that are available to us that we haven't yet fed into the solution.

This is a starting point, okay? We know that it's not where it needs to be, and I have deliberately switched off the benchmark screen because I want to engage you in conversation.

So I'm hoping that you guys will come and see us over the next couple of days and really give us some feedback around what you want, because what we want to give you in January is something that's useful.

Again, something where we have always tried to do is make sure anything we build is actually something that our target audience is interested in seeing, okay? Hopefully that gives you a little bit more of an idea of what we are planning on doing.

The last thing that I kind of want to talk about is the postmatch, okay? Now, what currently is available to players and the coaches is a very detailed breakdown of the match on a point-by-point basis, screen-by-screen basis, things like that.

What we are interested in getting feedback from you guys are is to really get a little bit of an idea of are we heading in the right direction for some of the information that we are looking at wanting to deliver?

The first thing is the standard match set screen. Is this something, from your point of view again, around the context of instead of just giving you the match stats, as we have done in the alerting screen, is do you want a summary when you sit down to write the story of actually how does that compare to what's gone on for the season? Again, it will automatically alert to you whether or not it's higher or lower.

This is more of the match is finished, I didn't necessarily watch it, because sometimes you guys are busy doing lots of things, so can this then give us a little bit more information?

The other thing that we have added to this is starting to include some of the conversion rate information, okay?

At the high level, we are starting with simple things like games, set, match points. When you look at this live here in Singapore, you also have the opportunity of looking at the score level, okay? Where you're actually able to go in and say if the player wins the first point of the game, goes 15-Love, what percentage of time do they then go on to win that game?

So really giving you the ability of diving all the way down and having a look at that and seeing whether or not that's actually trends that you want to look at. What we would love to get from you is would you like us to add a clutch point analysis to this, where we are looking at that for you -- and again, there is lots of fun definitions of what a clutch point is. Certainly from a game point of view we know what that is, but should we start looking at the fact that you're 2-5 down? All those types of things.

So our plan is to take this to the level that you're able to help us mold and look at exactly what you're interested in doing. So we will start at the high level. As I said, you do have an opportunity of looking at some of that information all the way through to the point level while we're here in Singapore.

The other things then that we are looking at wanting to do -- and this is the one that we are referring to as the match, the point tracker, is to show you the momentum of what actually happens throughout the match. When the player wins a point, the line goes up. If they don't win the point the line stays steady. So standard kind of stuff. In a lot of sports they do this. What we are starting to look at doing here is adding the key moments to that. And what does that look like?

As an example, these are only examples, things like adding aces, double faults. We decided to throw in on-court coaching, because we felt that was a cool thing for us to be tracking, as well. And does that have an effect? And we are looking forward to sharing more and more with the media on some of those deep analyses that we have been doing around when does on-court coaching happen the most? We know, based on the analysis over the last three years, on-court coaching happens the most when a player is up 3-2, okay? Then we say the next most is when they are down 4-1, and we then started to look at the effect of what that happens.

Now, we have all of this information now. What we need to do is work with you on what is the best way for us to be able to share that insight with you, and then also looking at the effect. We normally find, in a 4-1 scenario, the coach comes out, has a conversation. 80% of the time the player wins the next two games, okay, to bring it back to 4-3.

This is the type of data that we now have that we have been working, as Micky mentioned, really capturing that. Now we look forward to saying what else do you want us to be doing with you to share that type of insight? What would be super important about these screens is do we need to be tracking for you run of points? Do you want us to summarize that to say this particular player won this amount of points in a row? How many deuces have there been?

We so can do anything, okay? What we need from you is a little bit of guidance, because what we don't want to do is give you 50 things and you go, wow, that's too many, that's too many. Or do we need to go through the point of configuring that to give you the option?

So this screen can be viewed in two ways, and my lovely assistant has gone through and shown you the next screen. You can either look at it from the match or you can look at it on this individual set.

This was kind of an interesting one, and Courtney and I were playing around, having a look at this the other day, this is kind of the interesting, the context of this when we see it in the match as opposed to when we see it in the set, of actually seeing the momentum of this being a tiebreak set, that obviously one player got ahead. The other player then caught up. What will happen when this is a digital portal is that you can obviously hover over, and it will tell you the exact score. So you can actually see then when did the momentum swing happen.

This is the third iteration of this particular screen. The designer and I have lots of fun talking about this particular screen. We look forward to getting your feedback on what's the best way to do this, okay?

In the version that is live here in Singapore, you at least get momentum. So we are actually showing you players, who's serving, who's winning the point. Ultimately that information will flow into the visualization similar to this if we get the right feedback.

So the three sort of major areas we are looking at wanting to give you more information, before the tournament starts, is there something that we can call out?

We are playing around with milestone reporting. So this week we know things like Caroline Wozniacki is, at the moment, 397 wins for her career kind of stuff, so are those kind of things you guys want to know going into a tournament so you can keep your eyes on those kind of things.

So in that first screen, what else do we need to call out besides who won it last year, who is the oldest, who's the youngest, all those kinds of things.

As soon as the draw is done, we then release all of the information about the players that are actually playing in that field. If we have a change, that updates immediately, so you'll see all of that kind of information and you'll have access to those screens here in Singapore to give us some feedback.

We then move into the live stuff, the alerting capabilities. I do encourage you to have a look at the alerting capability here to try and give us your feedback. As I said, the developers are literally sitting at their computers, waiting for the feedback for us to work very efficiently to make sure we are ready to go in January to launch this.

And then wrapping through to the final point trackers, point-by-point analysis. As I said, it's a little bit of a different take to what's currently being done. It's certainly going to complement what the WTA is currently doing. Obviously match notes, very important part of the process, we are not looking to replace match notes. We are certainly going to complement the current system, and we work with you on what is the best way to fully take this to a digital platform in the future, how can we bring that in, and also for the bloggers, how do we get you the information as you need.

The plan for this is it's very much a second screen experience. It will run on any device. We are playing around with the best way. Someone showed it to me on an iPhone 5 the other day. Heads up: Doesn't look very good on an iPhone 5. We are working on that. Someone showed me an iPhone 5 the other day and I went, Oh, my goodness, how do you read -- Yeah. It's one of those things I'm used to the bigger screens now. But we will make sure it works on all devices for those of you who want to sit courtside or sitting wherever you need to to be able to do at that.

Hopefully that gives you a little bit of a background of what we are doing. Most importantly it's the feedback we are after over the next couple of days. As you can see, I can talk about this stuff all day. I get fairly excited about it. I'm very proud of the team that has built this. I want to call those guys out. They have spent a lot of time working -- we are truly a global team. I have guys in Germany, guys in India, guys in Australia working on this. What has made me the most excited part about this is all my developers now understand tennis, and that's great, right, that we have actually -- we have brought on some more fans of the sport, that these guys now are busting to take it to the next level, as well. With your help, we hope to do that over the coming years, certainly the coming months to get us ready for the January launch.

Hopefully that gives you a little bit of insight. I will now sit down and have a fireside chat with the ladies sitting onstage.

MICKY LAWLER: I want to say on behalf of everyone here, thank you so much to you, to Bonnie, Gabe, the whole SAP team for caring so much and for putting in so much effort to bring women's tennis to the next level. We can never say in words how much we appreciate all that you have done.

JENNI LEWIS: Thank you. Yes, thank you to the broader team. We will make sure we get that note out, because there are lots of guys working around in the background, as well.

Lindsay, thank you for joining us. The nice thing about this is you have been part of this journey from the very beginning in the sense that I remember meeting you many, many years ago back in Miami.

How have you kind of sort of seen this evolve over those years, as well?

LINDSAY DAVENPORT: Yeah, it's amazing. All the technology and the data that is presented to the players and the coaches, I wish I had it when I was playing, and I'm so grateful that it's available now.

But what really resonates with me as you were talking up there was explaining to you people about communication and what you guys want to see, because it's been a process for us, as coaches and as players, about what we really want to see in some of the data. One example I remember specifically is we were talking about serves and where opponents serve on break points. We were working with the data to try and get that, and we got it down, and all of a sudden we were talking, well, where did they miss serves? Then that was another component we added. The technology that's available helps everyone. It helps us tell stories and helps us help players play better, breaking down strategies in matches. There are so many different facets of this that are so helpful.

What I love about this is the real-time. And especially as a broadcaster, when calling a match, you know, you might see some stats and you might say, oh, they are serving at 40% today, that seems low. But to have an alert tell us that's the lowest this player has served all year, they've just hit their 14th ace, that's the most aces they've hit, it's something you don't have a lot of time to think about on TV what you're going to say. Maybe when you're blogging live you want to give the information as quickly as you can. To be alerted to some of the most important facts of what's happening in this match compared to other matches is going to be priceless.

I can't say how many times I have texted you or tried to get in touch with somebody, like, what is going on? Is this true? Is this about where the first serve is or the percentages? And now to be able to have this at my fingertips while calling matches, I can't wait.

JENNI LEWIS: To talk a little bit more about that, obviously you have an amazing eye and you can see that. Do you see also that you now have the fact sometimes to back up what you think is happening? How do you think that's also going to help you as a storyteller?

LINDSAY DAVENPORT: Well, you love to be proven correct, and so no matter how many times, let's say, on TV you can say -- I will continue with the serve -- they are serving way too many times to the opponent's forehand, to then be able to prove that with facts, 80% of the time they are serving to the forehand and 70% of those points they are losing, you know, to be able to back it up. Instead of just hearing somebody say it, you love to be able to give them the data, especially in this day and age. Everyone is so driven with data and proving people right and wrong, and to be able to have that at our fingertips, not only with TV but I'm sure the same goes with writers that are talking about this match in real-time, you want to have all of the access to all of the information as much as possible.

JENNI LEWIS: Again, we talked a little bit about the configuration of screens and things like that, so how do you think, from your point of view as a broadcaster, the ability for you to customize it so you can see, is it today that because she's playing a top-10 player, is it looking different, how do you think that will also help moving forward?

LINDSAY DAVENPORT: Well, isn't that going to be the most critical part of all of this? Because what I want to see isn't necessarily what you want to see in a match. So to be able to customize that, I know I look for certain patterns that are developing in a match, a lot of them revolve around the serve and return, the two most important shots in tennis. However, another writer might want to know what happens on the 30-All points or the break points more often than not.

So to be able to have exactly what you want, not what somebody else thinks is important but what you think is important, is really the most beneficial part of all of this.

JENNI LEWIS: Absolutely. Again, the factoring in of that -- you know, sometimes something is going to look a little different, so the ability of being able to say, well, dive a little deeper, has this happened before, is it again in helping verbalize and tell that story? And obviously, as a broadcaster, you get to do it live with TV graphics.

What is your opinion about delivering graphics where people are able to, as a blogger, drop in things to kind of make their story? Are you finding -- now I think we are in the age of digital, everyone wants visualizations for us to be able to see that, how do you think that's going to change, as well?

LINDSAY DAVENPORT: Absolutely. I know when I'm not present at a tournament and trying to follow matches, you rely on what everyone else is writing or blogging about. To be able to see that as well as read it and hear people's opinions from the media about certain matches is great, but you also want to know factually what is happening. So to be able to see the graphics, whether I'm at home on my iPad or reading somebody's great story about a certain match, to be able to see exactly what has been happening is so critical.

I think we continue forward and everybody gets involved and has a voice in what they want to see and what they want to know during matches, alerts, or if they want to know stuff going into a match or postmatch, there is really no stone left unturned with all these facts.

JENNI LEWIS: Absolutely. As we mentioned in the beginning, you have been part of this process from the very beginning. Can you explain, it wasn't tough to be interviewed by my guys, to sit down -- we're friendly.

LINDSAY DAVENPORT: I definitely encourage it. So often you're given something, and this is what's available to you. Not often do I think you're available or allowed the opportunity to customize it for what you want.

Like I said, the serve was one of the points. Well, actually, you know, let me see where they actually missed serves, because maybe they are trying to go here more often, and let's talk about some other stuff, missed shots, winners, and everything was then tailored to everybody's opinions on the matter.

Like I said, what you want to see might not be what I want to see every match. So to be able to have that opportunity to see exactly what you want to see and know exactly what you want to know is critical.

You guys take criticism very well (smiling). You take suggestions very well. But most of the bases you guys already have covered.

JENNI LEWIS: Perfect. Again, as I said, we don't bite. The guys are here. They are interested in talking to you, so certainly come and approach us over the week.

We are going to change gears a little bit, because I'm really interested in your thoughts on tennis and technology and where you sort of see this going in the future and where the opportunities are there for the sport in general, because we are a very traditional sport, but there are certainly some opportunities. Interested in your thoughts on that, as well.

LINDSAY DAVENPORT: Well, I'm definitely into the tradition of tennis. I remember the first time, maybe early 2000 years, we didn't sit down after the first game and they decided to keep it going. I was so nervous to play that match. Well, I always sit down after the first game. Why are they changing these rules?

Then many rules were introduced since. On-court coaching. I played for about two years with on-court coaching. I prided myself in being able to figure out an opponent's game. Now they're going to have the help of their coach? Then you get used to it and you start to love it.

Now being able to go on court and when I am a coach, I wish we could do it all the time. I'm sitting there getting all this knowledge, and then I get 60 seconds once a set to go in there and try and deliver the most important components of the match and what I see developing.

I wish that this was available every changeover, and I know other people don't believe in that and I know maybe it's not fair to some other players that might not have a full-time coach. I would love to see that. In every other sport, the coach has a chance to make a difference in timeouts or however they do it. I would love to see that get pushed forward even more so it's not just 60 seconds.

The other part of technology, I'd love to see the line calling on every court. I believe in equality. I believe that the players on stadium courts or center courts that have the review system, the same player should have it out on court 8 at whatever tournament.

I hope that grows in the future. Again, I know there are reasons why it's not there, but I do believe in that part of technology, as we continue to grow, I think that opportunity should be afforded to all players.

JENNI LEWIS: Absolutely. Great.

Micky, my best doubles partner, let's bring you back into the conversation, and then we will throw it out to the floor for questions, as well. Obviously, again, WTA, long organization, you have been around for a long time, you guys are on a bit of a journey in digitizing and doing some kind of things, how are you finding that as an organization and staying relevant, you know, as the league? What are some of the things that you obviously you have done and you're looking to do in the future?

MICKY LAWLER: Every day when I wake up and before I go to sleep I thank SAP, because it is a very daunting task. Without you, we would not be where we are, not anywhere close.

This year, as you know, we redesigned and relaunched our website, and we are so glad how much you loved it and supported us through this process, that it was a dream come true.

So where are we going? Well, we are, with your help, taking it piece by piece and in order of what we want to accomplish, instead of revolutionalizing everything overnight, taking the pieces and making them right, and hopefully lowering and lowering the age of our fans. In the Sports Business Journal a few months ago, we were very fortunate to have the average age of a tennis fan on television be lowered from 56 to 52. Well, woo-hoo, that's fantastic, but we need to go much lower.

So this conversation is obviously key to that, and so what I would like to see is that this information gets overlaid on match footage and that we can immediately get this information as the matches are seen and played so that, you know, your brain, as a fan, goes into overdrive, because I think that's what the youngsters need nowadays. They need to have five screens and, you know, their brains just -- I think they were born much faster. Yeah.

JENNI LEWIS: Absolutely. I think that's the technology of sitting and watching matches is that there is going to be a compelling reason for me to watch a match. The more I understand, the more likely I want to stay there as opposed to jumping off and doing five or six different things.

We will open up the floor now if anyone has any questions. Obviously we will give everyone an opportunity for some closing remarks, as well, but I want to throw out, are there any questions from the floor?

Q. Thanks for that. It's really impressive. I'm thinking about the brand that have developed the connected racquets and they get the spin, the speed, how much forehands, which side, and I'm thinking if both were merged it would be fantastic. Are there any talks with those brands, the WTA to develop it, or SAP to develop it?
JENNI LEWIS: Absolutely. I think the Internet of things, as we refer to it as technology companies, the buzzwords that we like to throw out there, there is a real opportunity. The interesting thing is in professional tennis -- I think that very much at the amateur level, and that's where we have done a lot of our research, we have been lucky to work with the racquet manufacturers, the components that add to the racquet itself, all the wrist components. So, yes, my team this year has done a lot of research in that. I'm interested in Lindsay's take on that, as well.

The professionals, it's kind of one of those interesting things of do they need that? I think from a fan engagement point of view, it's super interesting. It's the challenge of playing with a racquet that has to be charged. Am I going to do that as a professional? Absolutely, I think it is there, but it's more throwing back to the professionals of do they need that information or is it more a fan engagement piece?

LINDSAY DAVENPORT: Yeah, I think that goes to the players, right? Some players like all the information and other players they stay away from it and other times you have to decide exactly, as a coach, what would this player want to hear? Is it too much for them, or do they want that?

I'd be interested -- I actually don't know of a lot of players that go over that kind of info on a daily basis or even a weekly basis. I think they are more caught up in how that shot felt and what was the result of it.

Q. Like Rafa was telling me like practice, every hour after practice they go and they check...
LINDSAY DAVENPORT: He's one of the few, I believe.

Q. Even for us, if you add to this the topspin, ball speed, it's already impressive, but you can make broader...
JENNI LEWIS: Absolutely. And I think that's certainly the opportunity, as we move forward from a fan engagement point of view, and these are the very beginning of conversations that we are starting to have around, you know, how do we capture that from a professional point of view? Certainly in other sports we are doing lots of stuff at the team level, and it's probably a little easier when you're talking to a team than you are talking to individual athletes around that.

But I think we are at the very beginning of that. From a technology point of view, absolutely we can capture that information, and we do it when we do our corporate days. So when I bring my customers in and we have some fun, you know, we do a serving competition at the end of that and we track it all.

We kind of play around with that. So certainly the amateur -- I prefer not to know, because in my head, it's perfect. I hit the ball just like Kim Clijsters hits the ball. Apparently the data says another thing (smiling). Certainly, from that point of view, there is an opportunity for us, for sure, absolutely.

Any other questions?

Q. From a visuals point of view, how much of this can be downloaded? I worked with you last year, and we get a lot of sort of traction out of head-to-head, the tale of the tape, if you will, but it would be great to follow that up with the results and momentum on what you saw.
JENNI LEWIS: Absolutely. So every screen that we are designing that has that type of information in it, we are building in a way that you will be able to download it and use it. So it's whether or not, for those of you who blog, that you'd be able to capture it and drop it straight in. For the more traditional journalists, looking at the screen, capturing -- and that's one of the things that Tim, the designer who is here, is very keen to understand how you want to consume that information, because obviously we built it into the platform of is a straight export or is it more that you can screen cam it, grab it, and drop it.

So we will work with everybody to work out that, but the plan is definitely that you can take the pieces of the puzzle out and use those pieces as and when you need them, absolutely.

Q. I know in a technological world this might come as a big shock, but there are certain of my clients I can't use all these heavy specifics. For instance, in Beijing, I was not there, but I had to do -- I was just trying to find out, like, he won one of seven break points but you gave me a percentage which I couldn't use. I need -- you know, like AP, they are doing now very short reports or whatever, so I was kind of left in the dark. I picked up the assignment because the person who was supposed to be in Beijing didn't show up so I was helping out. But I can't give 53%. I need to give 1 of 7. So I just hope that some of what seems really simple and basic doesn't get lost in the shuffle, because there are clients that I know that that's what they need and they don't want anything as heavy-duty.
JENNI LEWIS: Absolutely.

Q. I hope that doesn't get lost.
JENNI LEWIS: Yeah, and that's a very valid point about the simplicity of what we are doing. SAP has a tag line that we run simple, and therefore we want to make sure the simple stuff -- the plan is on every screen that we show a percentage, the actual breakdown of numbers is always included next to it.

Again, I have struggled with the same. I'm a numbers person. You tell me it's 53%. I go, 53% of what? Is that 40 shots? Is that 100 shots? We will always include the number next to that. It's valid feedback.

Again, please feel free to come and challenge us on some of those kind of things to make sure that we are delivering the simple as well as the detailed.

Q. As anyone can tell you, I'm not shy.
JENNI LEWIS: Great. I think it's a valid point you make, one of the challenges we are working with the WTA is it's a global sport, and every market is different. You know, it's fun that in my hometown we only want to know the information if there is insight behind it; whereas somebody like North America, when we are working with Lindsay, they need everything. Everybody wants everything. You go, okay, we will give it all to you and you can work it out. I think the Europeans are somewhere in between where they are interested in knowing that.

That's the fun thing about building a platform that you can configure as opposed to where we go, Here's 4,000 things and you work out what you want from those 4,000. And I know you have the same problem when you're commentating all over the world, how much information do you give in a match?

LINDSAY DAVENPORT: And I think that's the style. Sometimes at tournaments we're afforded the luxury of a lot of info and at other times not, trying to tell a story without being able to back it up. And so to be able to have all the data, I think that is important, and we were talking about customizing it exactly how you want it. That's something that has been afforded on the flip side as a coach and now as a broadcaster. There are a lot of things I don't care about that a lot of other people do, and that's what makes opinions so great. And to be able to see what you want to see and not get cluttered, as well, is invaluable.

Q. I'd like to ask how it's going to be availability of this thing, because you present it as analytics for media. Of course it's great for journalists, but I'm sure many fans would also like to dig deep into the stats, as well.
JENNI LEWIS: Absolutely. As the transition of what we did, when we announced our partnership with the WTA, we said that it would always have a three-pronged approach, start with the player and coach, and then move to the media, and then move to the fan.

So we are working very closely with the WTA. As Micky mentioned website launch, all those things, now we look at bringing it all back into WTAtennis.com, so that is our intention to do that. We will do that together. What we want to do is work with you guys first, because if we satisfy you, we know we will satisfy the fan. So you're a little easier for us to interact with on a more regular basis, so we ask for your time, and hopefully what you get from us is a product you want to use that will then allow us to streamline very quickly and get it to the fan.

For you, as journalists, all of you have come here today will receive an e-mail from us with your log-on details for you to be able to access the site immediately. And we said, our intention is to go broader with some of the newer screens in January. We will work very closely with the WTA on how quickly we release this to the fan, but we will do it right and we will do it together. So therefore, our teams are working very closely to make that happen.

MICKY LAWLER: That's why we have also focused on the direct to consumer WTA networks platform so we are ready to incorporate this kind of data for the fan.

JENNI LEWIS: Any more questions?

MICKY LAWLER: I just have one more thing. So SAP has invested in the WTA because the WTA enables SAP to tell the technology story and to make it relevant to fans and to people around the world to then obviously grow the SAP business.

So no one at SAP has asked me to say this, but it would be really nice if you guys could give credit to SAP when you use the data and you show the graphs and SAP helps you to do a great job, continue to do a great job.

So thank you.

JENNI LEWIS: Thank you, Micky.

Q. Lindsay, having been a player and a coach and now media, part of the tradition of tennis likes to kind of shroud things in a little bit of secrecy. People want to weave their tales, and you're allowed to do that when there are no analytics, right? Everybody can say this is the story of the match when you're not saying, well, they squandered eight of nine break points, as well. So in terms of the storytelling capability and the resistance that sometimes coaches might have of making this sort of data public to each other, like I don't know if I want everybody to know where Maddie is hitting her forehand, and then from the media perspective, we might not want to have to answer to stats. We want to tell our stories. Just curious as to how you reconcile that, of wanting to get the technology out there while at the same time maybe, do the stats take some of the myth and romanticism out of the sport? I don't know.
LINDSAY DAVENPORT: Well, I have had to adjust my thinking as technology has advanced and advanced. If I was playing, knowing me, I'd probably look at exactly my stats from one match and try to do the opposite the next match so someone wasn't on to my patterns.

But it is so helpful -- again, I see it in two different roles. One, as a coach, it is incredibly helpful, one, you say to Maddie, Maddie you kicked every second serve to the backhand. Like, No, I didn't. Really? Really? Because I have it right here.

So in that regard it's been great, because no matter what you say you can always -- you can prove it to your player on the coaching standpoint when I show her graphics of another player, which I love to do, as Jenni can attest to, this is what this player does, okay? So now if they do the opposite, you say that's too good, but you better take away what's probably going to happen.

Now, when you get into broadcasting, you say things a lot and people love to challenge you. People love to say, oh, you're wrong, or that didn't happen. So I do like to have the facts there, as well, to say, well, this is what I believe is happening, this is actually why I believe it's happening, and facts and the data never lie.

The story about I think all the players and all the coaches just -- there is very few secrets anymore. There are very few secrets about what's going on matches, very few secrets about players' weapons or weaknesses. One, you see more on TV. Two, you can track it on the Internet. Three, you get all this data and stats provided by SAP all the time.

I think those days are gone where you're not really sure how a player plays. There are players I wasn't very familiar with that I have now been able to scout reasonably well either for TV purposes or for coaching purposes.

So I think you can still tell great stories, but they are going to be a little bit more factual, and that's, I think, just the era that we live in and that we are even going towards more and more each day.

JENNI LEWIS: Closing comments for us, we spent an awful lot of time working with the player-and-coach community to ultimately, you know, where we wanted to be the assistant coach. We are now on the journey where we want to be the assistant to the media. The only way we can do that is to work with you and take your feedback and work that.

We will do it as quickly as we possibly can. Sometimes we are not going to deliver exactly what you want, but that doesn't mean we are not listening to you. So the more that you engage with us, the quicker and the better the product will be.

Our intention is to have this ready for you at the beginning of the season in full production, so any of the things that you give us over the next couple of days will go into production. The guys are working through -- as I said, the data is all there. It's the visualization of the data that we would really like your assistance with.

We thank you so very much for coming and spending the time. I'm very proud to sit onstage with these two amazing ladies. I also want to say thank you to both of you for your time and support.

Lindsay, it's been great working with you over the years. Micky, as you mentioned, this is a partnership that works because there is mutual respect. We are both going after the same thing. We want to elevate women's tennis.

From a technology point of view, you're an awesome partner to work with because you are willing to take risks with us. We try things. Sometimes they work; sometimes they don't work. We adjust and we try again.

I think that's the way in which SAP is looking at this, and we are really proud to have our logos together and we are really excited that we are well into the second part of our renewal. We didn't make a renewal announcement because we were busy doing. We want to continue to do that.

Thank you to everyone. For ways in which you get the information, we captured all of you who are in this room. I will now make sure that we get your log-ons out to you. So for the match that's starting this evening, we will be here, I will be stationed in the media center for the rest of the week.

There are some SAP desks out there. We will also put a screen in the media center, this screen. I will be available for briefings throughout the week, so anyone who wants to have a private conversation with me, great. We will probably look to do previews an hour or so before the match or when you come on-site. The team is here to work with you and for you, so we will make sure those schedules work.

But again, thank you so very much. It was great to see a lot of familiar faces and meet some new ones. Thank you for your time.

(Applause.)

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