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ROGERS CUP WOMENAugust 11, 2013Karl HaleTORONTO, ONTARIO THE MODERATOR: We will start with an opening statement and open it up for questions. KARL HALE: It was a fantastic week of tennis here in Canada at the Rogers Cup in Toronto. We had a great free family weekend with a great attendance and a lot of fanfare, a lot of activation, new initiatives on the ground, so it was very well received. Then we had a great week featuring Eugenie Bouchard who won her first round and played a competitive match againstKvitova, showing she's arrived on tour. And we conclude this weekend with a great match with world No. 1 Serena Williams against Sorana Cirstea, so it will be a great exciting match today and conclude a fantastic week of tennis here in Toronto. Q. What's the impact of having Milos Raonic in the final in Montreal, to see Vasek Pospisil rising and playing in the semifinals, and obviously Eugenie Bouchard who did quite well here this week? KARL HALE: Well, it's a kind of tremendous feeling here in Canada. We're all very patriotic to our players, as everybody knows. It will have a tremendous ripple effect throughout Canadian tennis. One, we will have a lot more juniors playing the sport because of Milos and Vasek and Eugenie now. Two is that all of our players actually believe that we can be a great tennis nation, that we not a good tennis nation anymore, that we are trying to be the best, especially going into Davis Cup in September. We can look for an amazing result there, as well. Lastly, I think Milos now wants to be the very best in the world, and everybody sees that that's possible and will carry Vasek and push each other to the top of the game. In her own right, Eugenie Bouchard is Eugenie herself. She wants to be great and No. 1 in the world, as well. It's a fantastic time in Canadian tennis. It's the best time we have ever seen, so we look forward to the next few months and years to unfold. Q. I know obviously we are all happy about the Canadians doing well on the court, but off the court in terms of attendance, I gather you have to be disappointed in Toronto that the numbers were not where they were. What I want to ask you is when did you and Tennis Canada decide to take down the upper stands? And with the men's tournament next year, will you be putting the upper stands back again? KARL HALE: Yeah, one of the themes this year was to have a more intimate experience for our fans here in Toronto during the women's event. I think we achieved that, especially in our night sessions. People really enjoyed being closer to the action. What we do is every year after the event we review the successes and failures of the event and then decide on the upcoming season. So after this event we will review it, see what worked and what didn't work, and then make a decision on next year. Q. Could you talk about the impact generated by the Tennis Legends playing mere in Toronto in relation to tournament outcome. KARL HALE: Well, we have had the Legends for several years now. Every year at the end of the event we actually poll our fans to see what they would look. It's not our decision in putting the Legends in. It's our fan feedback. We try to give them the players that they want. Based on just my personal feeling on Friday night and Saturday night and even this morning, it was very well received. They did a great job. So we will review it after the tournament and see, going forward, where we go from here. Q. There were some men that joined the tournament this year on an invitational level. Could you just touch on that a little bit, on the thought process behind that, and how it was received? KARL HALE: Sure. Innovation is one of the things, characteristics of our organization here at Tennis Canada. We're always trying new and innovative things. This year we tried this men's invitational, and we're trying to collaborate the two events closer together such as the virtual combined concept with the Rogers Connected Zone in the media center. So this is a concept that came about from a few years ago. I don't know if you remember we talked about crisscrossing the men's and women's draw. We actually polled our fans to see what they thought of this type of event based on players that had lost first round in the past. It was very well received. So this year we gave it a try. The reviews were definitely mixed, so we will look at it after. It was basically done because we had government funding for the program, as well. That's what kind of kicked it off. So we will review it after this event and make a decision going forward. Q. I suppose the thought process is if you're not trying new things, what are you really doing to try and continue to build the sport? KARL HALE: Yeah, we try to make our event ‑‑we're still the largest one‑week tournament in the world. We want to continue going that way. Being a leader in the WTA and ATP tours, you're always going to have to try new and innovative things. Some are very successful; some aren't. That's not necessarily the issue. It's that you're always trying to push the envelope to make the experience better for your fans. Q. With the men's invitational, were there any discussions with Montreal to have a women's parallel event there? KARL HALE: Me, personally, I didn't have any discussions with them. The No. 1 thing was we had government funding here in Ontario to do this program, so that's why we did it here in Toronto. Q. Can you talk a bit about the impact of not having No. 2 and No. 3 here? Last night was sort of the first time fans saw a real match for Serena Williams. KARL HALE: Well, we lost Maria Sharapova and Victoria Azarenka. They are definitely fan favorites. We would have liked to have had them. It definitely impacts our sales, but considering during the week Serena did a fantastic job, all of her matches were well attended and she's a fan favorite, so we're very happy to have her. We still had 17 of the top 20, which is a great field in any right, even a Grand Slam. So we're happy with that. Q. How were ticket sales? KARL HALE: We are going to review after here to get the total. We expect them to be down based on the fact that the upper stands aren't there. We knew that going in to make this experience more intimate, which I think everyone can agree has been very successful, so we knew that we were going to take a hit to go forward with our event. Q. Is there a possibility you will crisscross the men's and women's draws at some point in the future, or is it pretty much a dead idea? KARL HALE:  I think anything is open right now. Like I said, it did have mixed reviews, so after the event we will look at them. We will do our polling with our fans again. It was based on government funding, as I said, so we will see how it goes. No definitive answer at this time. Q. Can I also ask you, the SanDiego/Carlsbad sanction is up for sale now. Have you guys talked to them, or are you possibly interested in buying that and maybe moving this tournament back a week so you can have the two weeks in a row again? KARL HALE: We have had no discussion with them at this time. Q. But would you like to see two weeks again, or are you pretty much okay with the one week and two cities? KARL HALE: We have had no discussions in trying to split the weeks or anything at this time.  We are just focused on the events, the virtual combined concept. As you see, the TV product is fantastic, and we're just going forward with that at this time. Q. I was just curious, especially because I live in Miami and I see the wonderful ambience, you were there at the Sony Ericsson Open on‑site wherespectators see the men and women together, and not matter what you do virtually, you don't replicate that. I want to know, perhaps an entertainment idea I had and maybe you had, instead of bringing in the losers of the men's next year to the women's site, perhaps create two mixed doubles? Have the losers of doubles pair off with the losers of some of the men, and at least that way the spectators can see a certain collaborative ambience with the men and women being together competing, is that an idea you think that might work? KARL HALE: We have talked about several different concepts. That is definitely one of them that we have talked about. Logistically it's very complicated. We learned that this year. So before we go forward with any other ideas, we're going to look at this, review it, see what is possible and what isn't. But that's definitely been in discussions in the past. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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