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ROGERS CUP

August 12, 2018

Karl Hale, Tournament Director

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

KATIE SPELLMAN: Hi, everyone. We've got Tournament Director Karl Hale here to talk to you today. Please raise your hand for the microphone.

And we'll have the first question, please.

Q. What would you attribute the success of this year's tournament, assuming that you're feeling that it's very successful?
KARL HALE: Well, we feel it's extremely successful. I think there's several different things. One is we had 19 of the top 20 players here. So that's the most important thing, a great player field.

But also I think we penetrated the social fabric of Toronto where now we're a major sporting event. So we had the players involved in various different ways, you know, from going to concerts and celebrities coming here like Sidney Crosby, Taylor Swift, Shaquille O'Neal.

So it's the real talk of the town now in Toronto.

Q. Two questions, one about this year and one about the future. For this year, in Cincinnati it looks like Wawrinka and Andy Murray both have wild cards.
You have four wild cards. I suppose on one hand you could say all four are always going to go to Canadians, or you could have said two Canadians plus Wawrinka and Murray. I want to know what the thinking was to give one to Murray but not Wawrinka who would have played qualifying had Murray not pulled out.

And two, for the future, you've got a brutal schedule the next time men are here with the Olympics in Tokyo at the end of July. It's hard to imagine all the top players coming here if the schedule is what it's going to be.

KARL HALE: Yeah.

Q. One, what can you do about it? And two, if you can't do much about it, will there be any thought to changing the Montreal-Toronto rotations so that when the men come maybe Montreal is feeling that Olympic pain rather than Toronto always getting it every time?
KARL HALE: So the first question is about the wild cards. So there's always a discussion about the wild cards. We're very much player friendly to development for Canadians here. So that's primary.

When both those wild cards came in, the requests, Andy Murray is a past champion. And going into the Olympic conversation, he came here and supported us after the Olympics. He's always supported us. And he's a former No. 1. So we had one spot, so we gave it to him over Stan.

And then we gave Stan the wild card in the qualifying and, when Andy was unable to come, then we gave it to Stan. So that was the thinking behind that.

As far as the Olympic question, that discussion is still ongoing. We have not discussed the Montreal position that you spoke about yet. We have not talked about that.

But we think we'll have a good player field. I think it helps having the Canadians. Denis and Felix being top Canadians, it will help us in 2020.

But we do feel comfortable that we will still have the top players here because there's a week in between. It goes Olympics, the Olympic events only, Olympic tennis, Olympic events, and then us.

So we do feel we'll still have a great tournament that year.

Q. Can you talk a little bit about the upgrades you guys did to the player facilities and maybe the impact that you think it had and just anecdotally what some of the players, how they reacted and what they thought about it?
KARL HALE: Any in particular or just all of them?

Q. All.
KARL HALE: Well, I think we look at it as fan and players every year, what we upgrade and what we choose to do.

The grandstand upgrading to 1,000 more seats to 4,000 and the covered area was a huge hit for the fans. Especially when we had to move Denis over there, we needed those seats. So it worked out great throughout the week.

The medical zone was a massive hit with the players. I took Connor McDavid and Jason Spezza through. And compared to the hockey medical zones, they said it's totally comparable.

Like, it's really a high standard. Rafa talked about it. They all really, really said it's a great improvement for them. So it's important for us to keep at a very high standard.

What were the other improvements?

KATIE SPELLMAN: Yeah, the private physio rooms, ice baths, champion's locker.

KARL HALE: Yeah, the medical zone. And the champion's locker we did as well. So just a much larger space and more comfortable for them. So it was bang on.

And obviously it wasn't our initiative, but the Pioneer Village Subway was way more impactful than we thought it would be.

Q. We've had quite a lot of rain this week. Not unusual. Any talk about getting a roof here like they're doing in Montreal?
KARL HALE: Yeah, I mean, it's a public-private initiative. And if we do do it, it's a communicate-friendly project that it would be for -- involving NSO's and the community. It would be covered for 9 out of 12 months.

So we're looking at it. We're just in the beginning process of it. But obviously with a week like this, you can see the need for it.

Q. How would you compare the ticket sales this year compared to last year's?
KARL HALE: Well, attendance to last year? We're much above last year. We're over 150,000 attendance for the week. Something we're really proud of, especially with the rain. We would have beat that tremendously.

So Rob Swan who leads that department does a tremendous job, and we're really happy with it.

Q. Could you touch on how much the subway being here has helped with people coming in this year?
KARL HALE: We don't have the stats on it. You know, we can just tell you by when people are leaving the stadium that much more people are using the subway. Also we can tell you that parking is down a lot. So that shows the signs of people taking the subway.

And me just personally walking the grounds, talking to fans and friends, et cetera, a lot of people are coming up on the subway. Even a Rogers executive today told me he should have taken the subway this morning, and in the future he will.

So we think as the word gets out to more and more fans that it's just really going to help us greatly.

Q. I wondered your thoughts on having a young rising star like Stef make it to the final. You know, four amazing top 10 wins on the way, what that means to the tournament. And also the way he was able to kind of integrate himself into the Greek community here in Toronto.
KARL HALE: Yeah, he's a star in the making. He's really shown at the tournament where you saw yesterday all the Greek flags coming out to support him.

He's an unbelievably humble, Roger-like personality. You know, so we expect great things from him.

It's been a huge benefit to the tournament to have a NextGen'er come up because that's the new generation of players. And it will be an exciting final with Rafa.

Q. You've been around the game a long time. Can you remember a time --
KARL HALE: I won't take that personally but... (Laughter.)

Q. Just looking at Denis and Felix, can you recall a time when you've had two Canadian men's teenagers at that kind of level?
KARL HALE: No. (Smiling.)

No. Like you said, I've been around the game a long time. And to have two players that are potential top 10, top 5 players is tremendous for the future of tennis in Canada.

And don't forget about Milos. He still has a lot of game left in him, and he won't give up his spot to them. He's still the No. 1 Canadian as of Monday on the ATP.

So the future is really bright, not just for the Rogers Cup but for Davis Cup and also for tennis in Canada. So you're looking at a 10-year window of tremendous and new accomplishments for tennis in Canada.

So we are very humble as Canadians as we are, but very excited about the future.

Q. As you were saying, there's a lot of the Canadians coming up now. Have you seen an impact through that on sponsorship and sponsor interest in the tournament?
KARL HALE: I would say yes. I mean, because obviously they're talking about him a lot more, and some of our partners are these players' partners.

So absolutely I think there's more sponsor interest. Participation is up. Everything in tennis in Canada is up. And we think that will continue over the near future.

Q. Do you feel it's important to you to have a larger doubles draw? And if so, do you have any interest of incenting the singles players, the top singles players, to play doubles while they're here.
KARL HALE: Well, it's not our decision to incent them. It's the ATP, the rules and the governance of the tour, in that aspect.

But we love doubles. You know, Daniel Nestor, of course, one of the greatest doubles players in the world.

We even looked at initiatives at our tournament to improve the doubles hospitality for the players because there's definitely a difference on the tours. So we're looking at adding some things for them next year. We think they're really important and valuable.

So, yeah, we have our blessing on all of that for sure.

Q. Any new plans going forward? Initiatives that you can see for next year?
KARL HALE: Well, we did a site walk-around yesterday. So we looked at some things.

Obviously the roof is something that because of the week with the rain that everyone is going to talk about, and we'll start the process of looking into that further.

But, you know, on the site, a lot of little things. Nothing major like that.

Q. How much would that cost?
KARL HALE: 70 to 80 million is what we're looking at. And it would be a public-private endeavor.

KATIE SPELLMAN: Thank you very much everybody.

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