NASDAQ-100 OPEN

March 30, 2003

Butch Buchholz

BUTCH BUCHHOLZ: Welcome, and it's been an interesting tournament. We've gone through the second coldest day ever recorded in Florida our first tournament. I think Richard remembers the Jamaican Police in the locker rooms. We've obviously had some ups and downs. But this year, I think we had record heat the first few days. But all in all, I think the tournament, considering everything that's going on with the economy and the war, we did very well. Our ticket sales are down about three to five percent. Our retail sales and food and beverage is down between eight and ten. In our minds, that's pretty much a huge success, considering everything that's going on. So, we also, a year ago, talked about the vision that Wick had for this tournament. They'd only been a sponsor for six weeks, so obviously, it was only a vision. This year, I think you see a lot more of NASDAQ. We're starting to see the reality of the vision when Wick and his people and our people brought Microsoft in. That's the first time Microsoft has been involved with tennis, so we think that was a major step forward. Another thing that NASDAQ has done, which is, I think, fantastic, is that we were at the market site in New York City and the whole telecast yesterday was at Times Square, which I think is something very, very special. So people walking in Times Square yesterday could see Miami and the tennis match.

BUTCH BUCHHOLZ: Were they really? Great, that's good. Other than that, we have somebody missing here, Cliff Buccholz. Adam has taken over Cliff's job. Cliff would have been here, but one of his clubs had a little accident; snow literally collapsed part of the building, so he's dealing with the insurance adjusters and all sorts of stuff like that.

WICK SIMMONS: And he thought certain primadonnas around here were difficult (smiling).

BUTCH BUCHHOLZ: I don't think you all are really interested in how many hamburgers we sold or ice creams or anything like that, so if you have some questions, we'll be more than happy to answer them.

BUTCH BUCHHOLZ: It was sort of a last-minute acceptance. It's not a presenting sponsor, it was something we encouraged them to do the back wall, and they paid almost accordingly to what the back wall is worth. They wanted to try it and see what it was like, and we were pleased to have them. I think it's been a good experience for them.

BUTCH BUCHHOLZ: It was a one-year shot, but hopefully, we're going to expand that.

WICK SIMMONS: Yeah, what we're doing, each year we'll be bringing more and more of our NASDAQ companies down here. What we did this year, for instance, last weekend, the middle weekend of the tournament, we had a Chief Marketing Officers Conference over at the Ritz here, where we had the chief marketing people from Yahoo!, Cisco, many other major NASDAQ companies down. That also gives them a chance to come over and get a look at the venue of the tournament. Microsoft had never been in tennis before. Microsoft came down, was impressed, chose to be a one-year sponsor this year, but we would hope Microsoft will be here every year. Ultimately, we hope we can get all sorts of new sponsors, NASDAQ-100 companies, to come down here and be tennis participants. So we had chief marketing officers last week, we had about 30 chief executive officers, or larger companies this weekend. I think it will gradually build here over the next three, four years.

BUTCH BUCHHOLZ: John, that's one of my favorite subjects. We would love to do that. We need to solve that problem. I think some of the options are to go to 112 draw. I'm not sure politically, I would think the ATP and WTA would support that. I don't know how the Slams would feel about that, because we're getting close to a 128 draw. That's not something we have -- we agreed not to do. But it is a challenge for us, and we will certainly bring it up with Mark and Larry again. It's also a little bit of a financial issue, because we've got to pay for all the rooms and just added costs in terms of officials. But I think it would greatly benefit the tournament if we could do that. I know that you all feel you sort of waste those two days, and we feel the same way. So if we could solve it, I think the tournament would be better.

BUTCH BUCHHOLZ: Well, I think since the Slams are basically all adopting that same philosophy, it's going to be hard to change it. I think the top players enjoy the fact that they don't have to start until Friday or Saturday. You can just tell, just look at our days, our Friday, Saturday and Sundays are our best days. We sell more tickets, more food and beverage, more retail those three days than any time during the tournament. If we could get another day, if we could get a Thursday out of it, that would be great. It's something that we've sort of had on the radar screen, but I think we all feel we should be more aggressive about it.

BUTCH BUCHHOLZ: Exactly. You're going to have some marquee names in that. We had Kournikova, I think Philippoussis, were maybe the only recognizable names, at least from the tournament's point of view, or fan's point of view, the first two days. So it's -- we're all aware of it.

BUTCH BUCHHOLZ: Yes. Another thing that we're quite excited about, and this year, we really had to make some adjustments with CBS. That's why we're starting 11 o'clock. That's why we're having a two-out-of-three men's final. We're happy to tell you for the next two years, for sure, we're going back one week, we're on CBS and will have our five-set finals. It appears that we're close to doing the same thing, this all the way through 2007, which would get us through our current agreement with NASDAQ. So there's obviously some politics involved in that, as there always is in tennis. But our European partners were good partners and understood the need to have the five sets and the need for CBS, and it's going to help Indian Wells and the NASDAQ-100.

BUTCH BUCHHOLZ: John, I'm not sure whether Estoril, Casablanca are in the same week. I know there's an adjustment. What really happened is you'll have six weeks between our event and I think the French Open, as opposed to seven. So you're going to cramp some of those tournaments in.

BUTCH BUCHHOLZ: I don't know. I don't think they've come out with the calendar for the Davis Cup in 2004. Actually, the calendar hasn't come out officially, but we were told we can go ahead and tell everybody that we're okay for 2004, 2005, even though the 2005 calendar, the Europeans have agreed to do this. So we thank our European partners.

BUTCH BUCHHOLZ: Television, CBS.

BUTCH BUCHHOLZ: Yes. We fit perfectly for what CBS wants because we'll play from twelve to two on Saturday, and then you go into the basketball. Sunday, they don't play basketball. So we can go from twelve to three. Then Monday night is the finals. So CBS has a quality event that they can put on television and not disrupt the basketball calendar. So it's perfect for us, and it just so happens also that Shawn McManus is the President of CBS and he represented this tournament for, I don't know, 15 years in selling television. So we were fortunate.

BUTCH BUCHHOLZ: Yes. As you all know, the calendar is going to change dramatically probably in 2006, 2007. We are talking to the Australians about their move. I know they haven't decided what they want to do yet. We told them we'd do everything we can to cooperate. We'll try to be good citizens. I'm not so sure it's in their best interest to move, but...

BUTCH BUCHHOLZ: Yeah.

BUTCH BUCHHOLZ: No one's brought that up yet (smiling).

BUTCH BUCHHOLZ: I think Adam can address this because he was part of this (laughter). I'm not ducking it, but we're on the course, it's either next year or the following year, we will have equal prize money. That's an agreement we've made with the WTA three or four years ago. Adam, do you know what year it is? Some of it has to do with WTA revenues.

ADAM BARRETT: We continue to work with the WTA towards a goal of achieving equal prize money. We have aggressively moved towards that over the last five years and will continue to work with them. It's in partnership with them, because they control so many of the television rights and some of our sponsorship rights. So it ties into the successes they have in the international rights sale and their North American and other sponsorship sales. So the reason the checks are different has a lot to do with how you account for prize money and how you distribute prize money. We began discussions with the WTA Tour in saying, "Wait a minute, even if we had, right now, paid the same amount in total to the ATP and WTA, because the WTA has a bonus pool, and because they have increased fees over the men, the winner's prize money check would still not be the same. Plus, the distribution percentages are not set by the tournament, they're set by the tours." So how they distribute between singles, qualifying and doubles is different. Then the breakdown between those groups are different. So I started discussion with the WTA Tour saying, "Not only do we need to move towards total dollars being the same, which is a goal of ours, but we need to start working towards accounting and distributing the money equally so some day that prize money check for the winners will be the same." And we need to move in A and B paths saying, "We should work towards aggressively making sure that at least the first four rounds start to become equal, even if the total is not, as we move towards the second goal of getting equal." We're working on it. We started the conversations a little bit late this year, after bonus pool was already done. As I said, I can't move the bonus pool money at this point because I need to go back to the players and say it makes sense to take that bonus pool money and put it into prize money, so in the end you're distributing the same check to men and women. So we are working on it. We're aggressively working on it, we believe in the goal of equal prize money for both the men and the women.

ADAM BARRETT: Well, the WTA, I mean, for starters, there's a lot of challenges that both the men's Tour and the women's Tour face. After spending a week with their on-site crews, the level of professionalism they have in running an event is extraordinary. They do an unbelievable job with putting on these competitions. Sometimes, that gets lost in the media as we talk about selling rights and we talk about branding and we talk about management; all the stuff that is kind of non-tennis. But from a pure tennis standpoint, the job that the supervisors do on site in managing the players and managing the competition is unbelievable. Larry brings a skill set of a lifetime of tennis that he's been involved in at the highest levels, an understanding of the game, an understanding of all the factions of the game, a desire to bring all those factions of the game closer together, and the ability and work ethic that's needed to really kind of put the team at the WTA on the right track to continue to grow and to continue to make the sport bigger and better and really kind of continue to establish where women's tennis is. There's many, many challenges that he's faced. The good news is, is they are in a pretty good spot. The media doesn't always pick that up. A lot of times, there's a negative spin because there's been turnover with the CEO. But the game itself, the quality of the play, and the quality of the stars is there. Larry, I think, brings the work ethic and desire to take that and continue to grow and continue to keep a special place for women in sports and women in tennis.

BUTCH BUCHHOLZ: I think it brings instant credibility to the WTA. I've spent a little time with him; I think he has a strong desire to bring the WTA to the table with the Grand Slams, the ITF and the ATP, and everyone start talking about tennis and not just ATP, WTA, Slams, everything. Everyone in this room knows that's a problem in our sport. I'm, again, going to say, I'm very grateful to the Grand Slams and their meeting in Switzerland, that they've agreed to sit down and start talking about the future of the sport and we're doing it together. I just think that's a major, major breakthrough. I think Larry will help that process immensely. Thank you all very much. Let's go, hopefully, watch a great match.