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ROGERS CUPJuly 27, 2008Karl HaleTORONTO, ONTARIO Q. Do you know how many people exchanged tickets back for the rain on that one rain session? KARL HALE: On the Wednesday day session, I don't have that figure. Q. Do you know if it made may kind of impact on your bottom line, any kind of significant impact? KARL HALE: I mean, obviously we lost some of that count for our attendance and some revenue from that session on the Wednesday day session. I don't have the figure of what it was. Overall we had one 151,000 people attend during the week; and also we did $10.7 million in ticket sales, which is $800,000 ahead of Montreal, so it's a record. If we did not have those rain sessions it would have been a really, really big number. Q. Did you get a sense at all if Federer getting knocked out made a difference to walk-up sales or anything like that? KARL HALE: Well, I think walk-up sales were more affected actually by the rain because it was a day session, so people actually -- you know, it was raining out so they probably didn't come. It did have an impact on us. People would like to see him play Nadal in the finals. But overall, I mean, we have Rafa in the finals, a Wimbledon champion. We also have Dan Nestor and Zimonjic in the final who are Wimbledon champions. So we're looking to a great final today, and everything has been very positive from that point of view. Q. I wanted to ask you if you could do anything regarding the television coverage during the week. This year I think TSN had less live tennis than they did in previous years. I wanted to know if you were disappointed with that or going into the tournament you knew you would have that kind of a problem? KARL HALE: I don't know the actual numbers on if we had more or less television coverage. I think the television coverage was more affected by the rain. They had to show a lot of taped delay matches and things like that, so I would leave it at that. Q. I think TSN had Friday night football committed. KARL HALE: They were on the 402 I believe it is. Q. Would there have been any thought when you're negotiating the contracts if you knew that was coming in to maybe putting it on CBC if that was an option on the Friday night? KARL HALE: Yeah, I don't know the negotiations of the television contract specifically, but I'm sure they looked into it. For whatever reason they went this direction. Q. That was kind of tough, because that was probably the best night of the tournament. KARL HALE: Yeah, the difficulty was the top half of the draw. There was a lot of upsets, so the day session we had, you know, some lower-ranked players but it turned out to be good matches anyhow. The night matches turned out to be Djokovic and Nadal. Q. There was an awful lot going on in the Toronto sports scene this with the golf and even the soccer. Do you think that tennis held its own, or how do you think you competed with the other sports? KARL HALE: In my experience, this is probably one of the most competitive sports entertainment weekends we've had with the soccer, the golf, and the tennis on. Our record ticket sales and attendance that could have been a record without those rain delays early in the week show the power of tennis and the power of the stars in tennis. We're very happy with the results with all of that kept in consideration. Q. How was sponsorship this year, and was it up? KARL HALE: Tremendous. Yeah, we were very, very strong. We had a lot of new sponsors that signed up for lengthy terms. So the team of Greg Wood and Lauren Ziv did a really good job of bringing in the sponsors. Obviously that shows by Rogers renewing for three more years. We're very confident with things going forward. Q. Do you have a ballpark number on the increase? KARL HALE: I don't have it. I can get it to you, but I don't have it right now. Q. Will you go back to August next year? KARL HALE: Yes. August 15th to 23rd, I believe. This year was because of the Olympics, but next year we're back on schedule. End of FastScripts |
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