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by Pete Bodo
Howdy. I have a new post up at ESPN about Sam Querrey and John Isner, the men who met for the Belgrade title yesterday. Madrid, the big combined event this week, is well underway and the first shock waves from that event were sent by the WTA. Justine Henin and Maria Sharapova are out, and Serena Williams had to fight for her life to survive Vera Dushevina. But before we turn focus on Madrid, I want to note a sobering state of affairs in the U.S. - the lack of title sponsorship at three of the big summer hard courts events: Los Angeles, Atlanta (ne Indianapolis) and New Haven.
These days, it's hard for an event that hopes to attract a good field to succeed without a title sponsor. I'm not familiar with the status of the hunt in Los Angeles or Atlanta, but I know the promoters in New Haven are working hard on securing a new title sponsor for 2011 (Pilot Pen, which has underwritten the New Haven event for 15 years, is out of the game come September).
"We're cautiously optimistic (that we'll find a title sponsor)," Pilot Pen tournament director Anne Person Worcester told me over the phone this morning. "Interest seems to be picking up despite the two big obstacles, the present economic climate and the uncertainty that's created."
When it comes to the perils and challenges of tournament promotion, New Haven could serve as a business-school case study as well a cautionary tale. The tournament began as a four-man exhibition on red clay in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, evolved into a model summer event located in the summer resort town of North Conway, New Hampshire, and moved to Stratton Vt. - abandoning clay along the way in favor of hard courts (mainly, to position itself as a sensible US Open warm-up event when the USTA finally settled on hard courts as its official surface). Eventually, the promoter sized up New Haven as an even better strategic site, and with the long-running commitment of a title sponsor (Swedish car-maker Volvo) it took the great leap into the metropolitan market place.
That segue proved painful, expensive, and ultimately disastrous for the original promoter, Jim Westhall. He lost his title sponsor (Volvo) and ultimately was forced to sell the event, but it enjoyed a limited resurgence under the patronage of Pilot Pen. In the long-term, the bigger the event became, the harder it had to work to remain viable. And that was especially problematic because as time went on the tournament moved ever closer to it's present slot - the week before the US Open. The very top players no longer seem to want to play the week before any given major, so New Haven sought to carve out its niche as a king (or queen) maker.
For example, Caroline Wozniacki entered the event with a ranking of no. 22 in 2008, and went on to win it. She returned last year, a Top Ten player and recognizable tennis star, and won it again as a prelude to reaching the US Open final.
Wozniacki, who's fantasized about attending New Haven's Yale University, has committed to playing in New Haven this year, and has become something of a mascot for the tournament: "She embodies everything our fans expect," Person told me. "She was a rising star when she first played here, she won the event, and she's remained loyal to us. Lindsay Davenport, Amelie Mauresmo and Justine Henin also enjoyed playing here. I can't tell you how many people have come up to me to say things like, 'I saw Justine Henin play a match on an outside court at your tournament and now look at her!' "
You really have to work the Rolodex and cast a wide net when you're New Haven's position, and the tournament promoters have done that - among other things, Worcester and her staff are also the official marketing agents for the city of New Haven, and work hand-in-glove with the folks at Yale. They try to integrate the tournament with efforts to promote New Haven as a center for, among other things, dining, music and culture, and have come up with some innovative fan (and budget)-friendly features.
Last year, the Pilot Pen promoters sold upper deck tickets for a week, at a buck a pop. That's a one-dollar admission ticket. The tournament also offered family packages, including one that consisted of: four tickets, four hot dogs, four sodas and some tournament memorabilia, all for a grand total of $70.00. Of course, you have the obligatory fashion shows and free musical concerts, but the event also came up with the New Haven Food and Wine Festival night, during which dozens of New Haven's chefs and restaurants prepare gourmet meals for box-seat holders at $125. per person. It would be a shame to see it all that innovative thinking and the infrastructure (human and otherwise) that it has created to waste for lack of a title sponsor for the tournament - as it did in Indianapolis.
According to my sources, a title sponsorship for an event like the Pilot Pen (it's an ATP 250, but a WTA Premier event) costs about $2 million annually.You would think that without much chance of featuring a Roger Federer, Andy Roddick, Serena Williams or Maria Sharapova, that level of investment would be hard to justify. But if ticket-buyers care about names, title sponsors care about numbers - attendance figures, broadcast hours, eyeballs on signage and logos. In that regard, New Haven has some good numbers to offer, including something like 66 total hours of domestic television coverage, on networks that include ESPN and CBS. And the tournament takes place at the peak of the US summer season just 90-minutes up the pike from Gotham, as interest in the US Open is building to a pitch. Those aren't the worst conditions for a firm seeking exposure through sports in the New York metropolitan area.
Last year, New Haven did a typical. . . New Haven. Fernando Verdasco, Svetlana Kuznetsova and Nadia Petrova, short on hard-court match play, were late entries. The combined fields featured 15 of the Top 20 WTA or ATP players. Wozniacki used the tournament as a springboard for her successful run in New York. It's likely that without a title sponsor, the Bretton Woods-North Conway-Stratton-New Haven saga will come to an end, and someone, somewhere, will try to pick up the pieces - actually, there won't be any pieces, which is the real tragedy. What will happen is that someone, somewhere will start from Square One to try to build a better model, as the folks in Atlanta must do.
I hope New Haven finds that title sponsor; what are the Caroline Wozniackis of this world going to do without it?