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MASTERS SERIES MONTE-CARLO PRESENTED BY ROLEXApril 27, 2008Zeljko FranulovicMONTE CARLO, MONACO ZELJKO FRANULOVIC: Good morning and welcome to everyone for our traditional press conference at the end of the tournament. It is an opportunity for me on behalf of the tournament committee, chaired by Mrs. Elisabeth-Ann de Massy, to thank you for your commitment to cover the tournament. I would like now to talk about the results of this 103rd edition. How far we are now from what was happening last year where we had many uncertainties about the status of our tournament. Now we are confirmed in our status as a Masters Series. Even better than that, we have been rewarded by the players themselves, who gave us the award of the best ATP Masters Series tournament of the year 2007. This is the most beautiful way for us to end this very difficult time we've had. I always repeat that the success of our tournament depends, before anything else, on the players. I would like to thank particularly the 56 participants who offered a beautiful show all during the week here. It's been two years already we were thinking we were beating all the records in terms of attendance of the public and also in terms of the quality of the draw we were offering. But we believe this year we did even better than that. As of the first day of qualifications, all the matches took place with the stadium completely full. No more tickets were for sale. We had a total attendance of 116, 583 people, which is beyond our magic number of 100,000 spectators. Also we can observe that the Italian public was very much present here with 37,000 spectators. We made a tribute to them on Friday because it was their national day. Most of all we were lucky to see two incredible semifinals with a lot of suspense with the four top players in the world: Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Nikolay Davydenko. It was a all real poker game with all aces. We are so close to the casino of Monte-Carlo here. This is unprecedented since Cincinnati in 1999. Of course, we all regret the retirement of Novak Djokovic yesterday. It's a pity for the show and for the public. But personally I believe what is most important is the health of the players. We had detailed medical tests and now we are awaiting the results. We say in French, 'Never two without three.' Now it's the third year we have the pleasure to see for the final Roger Federer playing against Rafael Nadal, No. 1 and No. 2. Both are exceptional players from a sports point of view, but also as human beings. They are really very special people and they offer a beautiful showcase for our tournament and also for world tennis because both players are deeply admired by young generations of players and we've seen that not only on the court but also around the stadium and the in the stands. I would like also to take advantage of your presence here to unveil for you the main lines of our new installations for the 2009 edition. The fact that our tournament was confirmed in its new status means that now we have to make a certain number of changes on the site of the tournament in Monte-Carlo. The main innovation will be about our infrastructure. Our new status in 2009 makes it compulsory for us to have a center court with a capacity of 10,000 seats at a minimum. We are also going to increase the capacity for welcoming the public of Court des Princes and also of the stands in the other courts, which means we will have 2,000 additional seats we will be able to offer to the public. In order to reach that goal, we are going to build, in collaboration with the members of our management committee in the Monte-Carlo Country Club, an additional stand around center court with a capacity of 1,600 seats. That stand will be placed here on the side of the sea. The idyllic landscape of the Monte-Carlo Country Club of course will be preserved. We are going to try everything in order to maintain what is very specific to our tournament, which is a sort of fairytale view between land and sea. I have here a photo showing how it will look next year. We will have the stand on the side of the sea with also additional boxes. This will help us a lot because there were people this year who had to stay out of the stadium without tickets. We are working with architects and landscape designers on a project for a stand which will not be very vertical, rather flat, in order to maintain the deep view on the Mediterranean Sea. I would also like to tell you, like any other stand here, it will be dismantled each year after the tournament. However, that stand will have an effect on the number of parking places at Entrance No. 4 to the south of the club where that stand has to be built. We are aware it's very difficult to park when people come to the tournament. So we are studying, in cooperation with the appropriate services of the Principality, all the possible solutions we might be able to find in order to compensate for the loss of the number of parking place. We are also going to work on other improvements, specifically on the improvement of certain welcoming structures even within the press center. You are the first ones concerned by this. We are very aware that the access to Internet was a bit difficult and we are really hoping to find solutions which will suit you better for next year. These are all the improvements we are making year after year in order to continue the development of our tournament at the highest level and also in order to be able to welcome the players, the public and you, who are representing the national and international press in the best possible conditions. Each year you are coming in even greater numbers. This year you were 298 journalists with accreditations, representing 22 different nationalities. Among you there are 157 journalists from the written press, 86 photographers, 55 journalists from radio and TV, broadcasting in more than 50 countries. So thanks warmly to every one of you. Before we will meet now together at the lounge bar, to have a drink all together, I would also like to thank for their support our four main sponsors: Rolex, BNP Paribas, Société de Bains de Mer, and Façonnable. There again, it's like four aces in poker. I would like to remind you our edition in 2009 will be a week earlier, from the 11th to the 19th of April, 2009. Now we will be awaiting the final, which is starting at 3:00. As we say in Latin: Alea jacta est, which means, "The die has been cast." Now I can take your questions. Q. Can you tell us if those 116, 583 are paying tickets or spectators? ZELJKO FRANULOVIC: No, these are paid tickets. That's how we can get the figures. Q. How many maximum can you sell for one day? ZELJKO FRANULOVIC: The capacity of the site is a little over 14,000. Q. So you can sell 14,000 tickets every day? ZELJKO FRANULOVIC: Not on the center court, but all together. Q. What are you going to do about the flow of people walking around because having an access up or down is almost impossible. ZELJKO FRANULOVIC: Well, this is not 'a' concern, it is 'the' first concern we have because we are going to design this beautiful stand. The landscape will be preserved. But how can we come in and out from it? I know this year already the flow of people coming in and out was very difficult and very congested. In the corridors, we know them well, we know exactly where there are problems. This year we were lucky because the matches were so interesting that people were not moving too much so we never had unbearable congestion. But, still, this is something we want to work on. We do have some ideas; we are going to try to implement them as soon as next year. Q. There is something I don't really understand about numbers. If you have 14,000 spectators every day, for 10 days you should have 140,000 people. ZELJKO FRANULOVIC: I said 14,000 allowed on-site. Between these 14,000 are people with badges, accreditations, some with invitations. Your first question is how many tickets we sold. I told you 116,000 because we counted the tickets sold. Then you asked me how many could we have maximum on the whole site. The whole site can hold a little over 14,000. Amongst those 14,000, there are probably, if you do the calculation back, 11,000 maybe, I don't know, tickets sold, and there are 2,000, 3,000 badges, invitations, service. We have to go down a little bit with the number of tickets. Nine days, 11,000, 12,000. We always come back to maybe 120,000 next year because of the 2,000 we are hoping to sell. Since we have no more questions, it would be a good time to have a drink together downstairs. End of FastScripts |
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