Former WTA tour CEO turned Pacific-10 conference commissioner Larry Scott talks from Wimbledon about how his new job compares to his old one.
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Part of the reason Larry Scott left the top job in women’s tennis was to spend more time with his family. But it turns out the former WTA tour CEO is still a regular at airport security lines. “I’m traveling with equal frequency because we’ve taken on a lot,” Scott says. No joke. In just a year, Scott has shifted the tectonic plates—or nearly so—in college athletics.
Since leaving tennis in July 2009 to become commissioner of the Pacific-10 Conference, Scott has led the upheaval in the college sports world. He persuaded Colorado (from the Big 12) and Utah (from the Mountain West) to join the Pac-10, and almost pulled off one of the biggest coups in college conference history by bringing in the University of Texas. At the last minute, the Longhorns stuck with the Big 12. As for his bold moves, Scott says, “That’s what I was brought in to do.”
This week, however, Scott returned to his sporting roots. The 45-year-old has been at Wimbledon with the Rose Bowl management team and his Big-10 counterpart, Commissioner Jim Delaney, in what he called a “benchmarking exercise.” Scott says it struck him when he entered college athletics that the storied New Year’s Day bowl game between the Pac-10 and Big-10 winners shares certain qualities with Wimbledon, or perhaps golf’s Masters. “The Rose Bowl is to college football what Wimbledon is to tennis,” says Scott, an all-American from Harvard who played on the ITF Pro Circuit and served in a number of high-ranking positions with the ATP tour. “I’m trying to work with my colleagues to broaden their horizons.”
Scott says there was much to be gleaned from the blend of tradition and commercialization at tennis’ most hallowed event. “What’s unique about Wimbledon is that they’ve managed to maintain and celebrate the heritage and at the same time they are very progressive,” he says. Scott hoped that observing how Wimbledon “preserves its heritage and at same time is aggressive about building for the future” could bring new ideas to the Rose Bowl.
The biggest difference between running an American college conference and running women’s tennis? Scott cited the passions and level of interest in the U.S., and of course, politics. “[Pac-10 fans are] tribal. It reminds me of English Premier League,” says Scott, who was based in London when he worked for the ATP. That fervor is what distinguishes college sports from pro athletics and makes it so successful, according to Scott.
When asked about the notoriously tangled tennis infrastructure, Scott chuckled. “People in the college world think it’s a political type of environment, so I try to explain to them what tennis is like,” he laughs. “Tennis is among the most complex political environments because there are so many different stakeholders and it’s so fractured.” According to Scott, putting the now-12 schools in the Pac-10 on the same page is a cakewalk compared to coming to a consensus with the ATP, WTA and ITF. “It’s easier to get 10 schools aligned around a vision,” he says “They want to row in the same direction. They can clearly see the benefits more so than in tennis.”?Although the interest is of “a different order of magnitude” than women’s tennis, the opportunistic Scott sees that as an opening. Schools like the University of California at Los Angeles and Berkeley and Stanford University are “well-known brands” some of which already sell merchandise overseas, particularly in Asia. “One of the things I’m going to try to tap into is doing more business in that part of the world,” Scott says.
Scott has kept his house near WTA headquarters in St. Petersburg, Fla., but he is getting acclimated to life in the San Francisco East Bay, where he lives with his wife and three children. He still watches tennis when he can, and has even dusted off his racquets. The Long Island native, who reached a high of No. 210 in the ATP rankings, has joined his first USTA league team. He has no plans to enter the USTA qualifying wild-card tournament—at least not yet. “Maybe next year,” he says. Scott says he misses “the destinations, the people, the iconic events” in tennis.
A consensus-builder by nature, Scott was responsible for many of the WTA’s better moves. He orchestrated the so-called roadmap that shortened the tennis season; he helped put together the record-setting $88 million deal with Sony Ericsson; he oversaw a multi-fold increase in sponsorship revenue during his six-year tenure and a 40 percent increase in prize money. Dressed in a dark suit and flanked by his wife, Scott didn’t seem in the mood to touch on any of the sport’s burning issues. After all, that’s history for him.
But he admitted there are perks to visiting the All England Club more as a spectator than a working stiff. He’s been able to hang out with old friends, watch matches, and visit the bar. “I’ve done things I haven’t done in 20 years,” he says. Scott says he’s had a busy year on the road due to the conference’s expansion, management changes, upcoming TV negotiations and familiarizing himself with the college sports landscape. If the travel is as frequent as his WTA days, at least he no longer feels like George Clooney in Up in the Air. “Especially the way tennis was growing in the Middle East and China, I found that more and more I was doing much longer haul stuff,” he says of his globe-trotting. Now at least, “the distances are shorter.”