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TEB BNP PARIBAS WTA CHAMPIONSHIPSOctober 21, 2013Stacey AllasterISTANBUL, TURKEY THE MODERATOR: Good morning, everybody. We have lots to do this morning. I'd like to welcome each and every one of you to the 43rd TEB BNP Paribas WTA Championships. We'd like to welcome tennis fans from around the world who we are welcoming, watching us on WTA Live. We will be joined by WTA chairman and CEO Stacey Allaster who will be giving her state of the WTA and taking your questions. Following Stacey, the WTA's All Access Hour will begin at 10:30 with world No. 2 Victoria Azarenka taking the podium first. Without further ado, please take a look at the WTA's 2013 season in review. STACEY ALLASTER: Merhaba. Good morning. I will not be dancing tonight. That was done last night. But you can stay tuned for Sunday where we will have a much bigger party. When I watch that video, I'm the luckiest woman in the world to represent the best female athletes for the past 40 years. It really is quite an honor. This 2013 40‑Love celebration had been about paying tribute to those that have built the WTA. We started with of course the Original Nine, these nine women who stood up to the establishment and said it wasn't right that the men should be paid 12,000 and the women were only receiving 2,000. They set the journey and the course for change. But then Billie took it one step further and took on the challenge of playing Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes match. I'm in tennis, and I thought I knew the story. But I must tell you this year has been such an educational year for me personally to learn more about how hard it was to be a woman in 1973, how hard it was for Billie, and the weight of the world that she had on her shoulders and the significance of what a tennis match was where it did change the lives of women forever. Serena talked about Billie giving her and all the players an opportunity to play tennis. I truly believe, had it not been for the Original Nine, had it not been for Billie beating Bobby Riggs, had it not been for the 40 years of the WTA, there wouldn't be a chance for a Stacey Allaster, a female, to be a CEO of a world‑governing body. So, like Serena, I too am incredibly appreciative of that lady who we honor with this trophy. So, with that, I think it's incredibly important in my job to not let this generation or the generations that come again to not forget 1973 and the years that have followed. So we kicked off our 40Love celebration in Australia, another tribute at Roland Garros, and part of our strategy was to bring back all of the WTA players throughout the year. This is their WTA. They helped build it. We wanted them to be part of the celebration. In NewYork, we lit up the Empire State Building in honor of our 40th anniversary, and again, in honor of the USTA leading the way with 40 years of equal prize money. And then in London during Wimbledon we had this incredible special afternoon. It was sunny on Wimbledon that day, just a glorious day where 23 women, who have held the world No. 1 ranking, we had 19 of them together onstage sharing their stories. It was magic for those that were there. What we took away from that was that there's so much storytelling that these incredible champions have that we're going to do a much better job going forward at sharing that with the fans, because that was just a sneak peek of what we think we could offer everyone. Istanbul, absolutely a record Championships for the WTA. With 54 broadcasters, over a thousand hours will go out this week to 170 countries. In 2011 when we started here, we had approximately 17 million fans consume the TEB BNP Paribas WTA champions, whether it be broadcast, online, mobile. Last year we had 42 million, and I'm very certain that my team will deliver 50, 60 million of fans who will watch either online, on air, or on their mobile devices the 2013 edition. I said it last night at the press conference for those who were there. This nation is so passionate about sport. We are so fortunate that they love our sport. But ultimately the federation, Osman Tural, the president, there together with TEB BNP Paribas, want to use these Championships, now that we will come to an end, ultimately they want to use the Championships to inspire the Turkish people to play our sport and ultimately one day have a champion. Who knows? It might be this little girl or one that we don't know yet. But I'm absolutely convinced that the work that the TTF, TEB is a partner now in grassroots development, combined with the inspiration that the Championships will leave, and the Istanbul Cup will come back on the WTA calendar in 2014. And speaking with Osman, he still wants to have more WTA tennis here. That combination of sport development one day will produce a Turkish champion and probably many more. To our champions. Really, just‑‑ you look at that photo, and I just couldn't be more proud and more confident in the product that we have to excel women's tennis for this next decade. I don't know where you start with this young woman who is breaking all of the records. 32 years of age. For me, probably the special moment of 2013 was watching her regain the world No. 1 ranking in Doha. If you watch that film, how emotional she was, I think everything came out of that moment where she realized she was, with all of her struggles with her health, that she was once again back on top. I think those of us that follow tennis week in, week out, we love it. We are in a moment of greatness with Serena Williams, and it's not just me saying it. The greats are saying it. A couple of recent interviews that Billie and both Chris gave and talked about Serena: If Serena keeps going, she's going to be the greatest player ever to have lived. I'm a big believer in that every generation gets better, but Serena should be, could be the best that's ever lived. Billie Jean King. Chris Evert: I think she's the greatest player that we have ever seen up until this point. Nobody has had the power and the shots and the serve and the complete package that she has, so she's the best tennis player. Last night, I must tell you, I was pretty pleased when I heard two things from Serena: I love this sport, and I don't want to retire. (Laughter.) Bless her that she stays healthy. She's in her moment. I know every time that we all get to watch her it's a great gift that she's giving to us and to her fans. To a young Vika. This is a tough year for her, but she stood up and she delivered. 2012 wasn't an accident. And being able to defend in Australia, that too was another watershed moment for her. It's feel‑the‑pressure on Vika throughout those Championships. I think she's had a fantastic year. She's pushed Serena. The rivalry is happening, and it makes for a great 2014. Also in 2013 we saw some new emerging stars. Sloane Stephens. Sloane will be with us later today as an alternate for the Championships. A young Canadian, Eugenie Bouchard, also showing that she's a force for 2014. Young Madison Keys I think absolutely will be a power force on the WTA. And Monica Puig from Puerto Rico, another one to watch. I think what's so great about this mosaic is players from different nations once again showing the depth of the WTA. And then we have 11 teens in the top 100. The pipeline continues to build where we have this mix of the established stars, rising stars, and those that are coming. We highlight Svitolina, of course the great Laura Robson, Beck from Germany, so many from Germany now, and Donna Vekic from Croatia. These are just a few that we highlight out of our teens for making again a strong product for our future. On the business side, presented to the board in 2010 a three‑year business plan. As we come to the end of that business plan, 2011, '12, '13, my team has been able to contract just over $200 million of revenues for women's tennis. In 1973, nobody believed women's tennis would be commercially successful. $200 million in contract with our largest TV deal in our history, the largest Championships deal in our history, new assets being generated with being data content licensing, new tournaments, and new sponsors. Not only did every girl have an opportunity to play women's tennis if she had the right, that sponsors and cities have stepped up to invest in women's tennis. Turkey took us to this level, and now Singapore plans to take us to another level. A year ago I was here sharing with you the finalist candidate cities for the 2014 Championships. In April a passionate delegation from Singapore traveled to St. Petersburg, Florida, and they delivered truly the most incredible presentation to our board that on a hands‑down our choice was Singapore. Why? Our confidence in their delivery with their infrastructure, their proven ability to stage world‑class events, whether it be the Formula 1 or Junior World Olympics. We have tremendous trust, respect, we like them, you all get a chance to meet them. There is a small group coming at the end of the week. A few are here today with us. They are just an incredible nation that will use our Championships, our athletes, to once again inspire more little boys and girls to play our sport. I'm going to give you a sneak peek. This is not final. But how will the Championships change? Here, Istanbul we will start on Tuesday and be a six‑day event. In 2014, we will have seven days of tennis starting on Monday night. In addition, we will add four doubles teams, so we will be like the men's Masters. We will have the top eight singles players and the top eight doubles teams. In addition, we will add new events to the Championships format. Those events will take place most likely on the Friday, Saturday, Sunday leading into the Championships. We are working on this concept, but most likely it will be an invitational of rising stars, where those players who are on the cusp of making it to the Championships, those I introduced earlier, will play at an invitational. And in addition, it will be those players playing against top Asian players. That will be very important, because part of our strategy of going to Singapore will be to build tennis in Asia and specifically Southeast Asia. So it will be an opportunity for those that are in the top 100, 200 in Asia to have a chance to compete against the best in the WTA. We want to bring the WTA former champions back to their Championships. Will that be two, four, a Legends event? We're working on that, but the great news is that we will bring our former greats back to their Championships. There will be pro‑ams for our corporate partners. The practice courts will be open to the public. And we will fully integrate the community and entertainment into these Championships. In the new sports hub, the national stadium, there will be a concert on that opening weekend to celebrate the season, and there will be a fan fest for the full ten‑day Championships open for free so that our Championships will be accessible to everyone. As you can imagine, the fan fest will have all of those interactive activities to get racquets in kids' and adults' hands to promote our sport and have more people playing. From the player perspective, there will be a party. Actually, there will be most likely two parties. There will be a draw party like we had last night, and we will reintroduce the year‑end party that we previously had in Madrid and that we had in Qatar. That most likely will be at the end either on the Saturday or the Sunday. In addition, there will be industry conferences, whether sports marketing, women in leadership, sports science and medicine, coaching. The good news is we have five years of programming to fill, and what we want to be able to do is bring all of the industry to this season finale and this massive celebration of women's tennis throughout 10 to 11 days. For 2015, I will give you insight into our thoughts. The board will approve this in December, I'm quite certain. We will become an eight‑day Championships, Sunday to Sunday, and we will then adopt the full schedule that the men have where our athletes can play day on, day off. With the competitions being so tough, 6.5 million on offer this year, 7 million next year, the ranking points, everything that's at stake, we need to give the athletes a day on, day off, just like they have at the Grand Slams and just like they have at our mandatory events. We believe that will produce our best product and give our athletes the best opportunity to perform on that stage. So this will be an evolving process. We are looking forward to working with Singapore, and I can guarantee you, as they said to us during that April presentation, when they hand the WTA Championships back to us in 2019, without question, this crown jewel will be much more valuable for the WTA. For us, it is our flagship to promote the WTA. It's also the driving financial engine for the organization. So it's critically important on both scales to have that opportunity. We are in the midst of setting up an office in Singapore. Our goal is to be on the ground and to build this opportunity, and we believe that you have to be in the community to make this successful. Melissa Pine, who is our leader here at Istanbul, has been promoted to year‑round tournament director. She will be moving to Singapore. I have recently hired as CEO of Asia Pacific Ryan Sandiland. He will start at the end of the year. The two of them will set course to build women's tennis in Southeast Asia and wrap around all the work that we have been doing in China and the rest of the region. I think when you visit, anyone who has been to the Formula 1 in Singapore, that fusion of world class sport and entertainment, you will see exactly what I'm talking about today. That Formula 1 that Singapore has created is "the" most innovative race on the circuit, and Singapore has the same aspirations for the WTA Championships to be the "the" most innovative sport entertainment experience on the WTA. We look forward to hosting everyone. Last year at this time I said we were close with one, maybe two new premium global sponsors. We had been trying and working so hard to be able to announce last year at this time, but they kept us dancing a little bit, but the great news is we got there. In August of this year, we were so proud to announce our partnership with SAP, our official analytics partner. Just like Singapore, SAP wants to innovate women's tennis and make it a more engaging and robust experience for our players, for our fans, and for our media. Jenny Lewis is here, and every day Jenny has new ideas about how she's going to use our data, work with our coaches, work with our players, work with the WTA staff on how SAP's software can improve the knowledge for our athletes on how they can perform better and how our staff can use SAP's software to improve our processes.  So I welcomed you last night, but I will officially welcome you again this morning. At the start of the year, we announced xerox. Two premium global brands in the same year stepping up to invest in women's tennis. xerox is a partner, they are global, 18 events, and they too want to enhance the experience for our fans. The team introduced WTA Live, and xerox immediately stepped up and wanted to be part of it, and there is more to come next year with our partnership at xerox. They too are using their business solutions to improve the efficiencies of our business of the WTA and also of our tournaments. Where are we at in replacing Sony Ericsson? The good news, SAP and xerox came on board in 2013. They haven't completely filled up the gap left by Sony Ericsson, but I still feel incredibly confident that we will replace Sony Ericsson. It's a matter of time. I think the question now, is at this point, will it be one partner on a global basis, or will it be a lead global partner on a regional basis? There is no doubt that the market will ultimately tell us what that format will be. I can say that there are several good conversations going on. I'm going to leave you this afternoon and go back to NewYork, talking to prospective sponsors, and I am very certain a year from now that we will be able to announce one, two, maybe more partners, premium brands that will join the WTA family. On the content front, last year we announced our Perform partnership. This was our full year with Perform. They have done a tremendous job at increasing the exposure for women's tennis. It's been a 500% increase in the number of hours of women's tennis being produced, a 150% increase in the number of matches that ultimately means more players from more nations we have been able to share versus our previous production model. They have been producing our news feed in several different languages on multiple times of the day, and in addition they are now producing a magazine show for us, which also provides great content. In addition, my team is right behind this full push in digital.  By the end of this year, we've got 83 million fans consuming WTA tennis, whether it be on dot‑com or through social media. It's a big bet for us. I talked about it last year. I'm in the midst of hiring a VP of digital content publishing. We will do more and more in this space, more and more in all of that shoulder programming, short form off‑court for mobile and for dot‑com. So that's what you will see coming for 2014, along with our investment in Singapore. This global tour, the athletes are living the dream, we are living the dream that Billie wanted a global tour. 54 events in 33 countries. We started in 1973. We are predominantly a U.S.‑based WTA. We can tick each continent. Without question, the strategy is to be global. It is to nurture and build upon the success of our mature markets in the Americas, in Europe, but without question, Asia Pacific is one of our three big bets. I talked about it last year. Now having Singapore and the Championships in that region crystallizes that strategy. We will continue to have our office in Beijing. In 2008 when we opened our office in Beijing we had two events in China. In 2014 we will have eight. Five of them, a combination of premier and the internationals, and three of the $125,000 events that last year were just in the test phase. We will have three of those in China in 2014, giving us a very good footprint and using the China Open as the major combined event in China like we have in other major markets like the US Open. Singapore Championships, talked about it being the anchor for Southeast Asia. We are going to be working on the priority markets, but obviously Indonesia, Malaysia, India. Those will be markets for growth for the WTA as we set course in building up the Championships. We talked building the WTA's presence in Singapore on a year‑round basis. It will be far‑reaching to work with not only Singapore but all of the countries surrounding. When I was at Singapore a couple weeks ago I met with the presidents of many of the regional federations on how the WTA can partner to promote tennis to the youth and ultimately make these Singapore Championships Southeast Asia's Championships. That will be a key component of our overall growth strategy, just like it is in China, to be on the ground, getting racquets in kids' hands and to make them future fans and ultimately potentially future players. I close again with mixed emotions that this will be our final set, but we are again so appreciative and so grateful for everything that the TTF have done, for everything that TEB BNP Paribas have done. We couldn't ask for two better partners. We look forward to a record‑breaking third set, and I will close by saying, Tesekkurler, Istanbul. THE MODERATOR: We will now begin the Q&A session for Stacey. Q. My question is about TV coverage mostly. I know obviously with Perform the number of matches that have been aired have been much bigger at a lot of tournaments. I'm wondering, at some of the combined events, it feels like sometimes the number of matches has slipped behind the number of men's matches at like Indian Wells, Cincinnati, combined tournaments like that. I'm just wondering what you're doing to try to address that and make that more level in the future. STACEY ALLASTER: Good question. At our combined events there is a minimum standard, and everyone has met their minimum standards. Obviously the goal is to get more. With Perform now having a production model, and they will come in and produce a secondary court, we are working through the growing pains predominantly in the U.S. tournaments. We didn't have that issue in Madrid. Perform came in and produced a second court. I do know Indian Wells is currently working with Perform, and Indian Wells is looking to having four courts. Don't want to get ahead of ourselves with Indian Wells, but they are looking to dramatically increase the number of matches that will come out of Indian Wells. We need to do the same in Miami, and we need to work on Cincinnati. Q. Moving on with the times, this was, as you say, a huge year for the WTA in many respects, and yet at the ITF general meeting this year they appointed a board without a single woman representative. Do you think that was a blow for the women's game? STACEY ALLASTER: What I can say about that is in 2013, for there not to be a woman on the ITF board, is sad. It's a sad state for a board that prides itself on equality, but I do know, Neil, that the ITF is not pleased with that result, and I know that they are addressing that. I think ultimately that is the main point to take away from their governance model, that they are addressing it and it needs to be corrected. Q. Just talk a little bit about the evolution of the women's tour. It started out there were few combined events except for the Grand Slams, obviously. Now there is a number of them. There are different feelings on that. One part has been very successful at the high level. You also have some women‑only events that are fairly successful. Winston‑Salem recently turned down a request to have a combined event because the guys aren't necessarily as pleased about it as the women. Going forward, do you think it's important to have more combined events, or should there be some women‑only events to keep the identity of the WTA tour to a degree? STACEY ALLASTER: I think it's important to have both. Obviously combined events have come together because that's what fans and sponsors have wanted, and it works in certain markets. I used to be a tournament director of Canada, as you know, where we didn't combine the events, where we had an event in Toronto and an event in Montreal. I do think the combination of having women's‑only events to let the women shine on their own stage is good for women's tennis, but there is no doubt combined events are also good for women's tennis, and I think it's finding that right balance where we have the quality and parity at combined events. Where we don't, that's where it doesn't make sense. THE MODERATOR: Well, thank you, everybody, for helping make this portion of our events today a success. A big round of applause. (Applause.) FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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