It's been busy and uh with the with the
fan week and all the events we have
going on in the front end. It feels like
a full month, but again, what better
place to be if you love tennis, there's
this is the center of it all. So, it's
uh couldn't be better.
>> Explain to everybody what it means to be
uh the director of player relations
here.
>> Yes, I joined this role about 9 years
ago, straight off the court. Literally
ended my career on court 10 right behind
us and it was in the office, you know, a
month later. Um originally the direction
was you know to improve the kind of
relationship with players understand all
their needs and how can they have a
better experience at the US Open. I
think that has evolved over the last
nine years to you know building new
events things like we we're seeing in
fan week with stars of the open mixed
doubles tournament. Um but really just
everything that the players touch which
is so many things right from the
transportation and the hotels to you
know prize money and all the everything
that goes on with the biggest events
they participate in. So, you want to
make sure everything goes well so they
can perform their best out there on the
court and have a good experience. Can
you give us the perspective from
somebody who was on tour and and kind of
like what goes into it? I think a lot of
people romanticize the idea of being a
pro alete, but then you really think
about it, especially in tennis, and you
think to yourself, wait a second, this
means you're on the road
>> all the time.
>> You're never sleeping in your own bed.
>> Um, you're spending a lot of time on
airplanes.
>> Y
>> and
>> spending a lot of money on all the staff
that travels with you. It's very
expensive and if you're not one of those
household names, it's not easy to make
ends meet.
>> Yeah, it is. So, there's a lot to that
equation. I mean, first the the
financial side. Yes. Right. You're
you're traveling the world and and how
you need to travel depends very much on
kind of what level of sport you're at,
right? And I I equate a lot of it to
baseball sort of single A, double A,
AAA. Uh the single AA level, you know,
everyone's just trying to survive,
right? There's not a lot of money coming
in. Not a lot of things are being
covered. As you get to the double A
level or the challenger tour, you start
to get where there's free hotels. You
start to get meals covered and the
checks start to improve a little bit.
Once you get to the ATP tour here, you
know, life is good, right? And you know,
you see first round prize money,
$110,000. Okay, now we can start to
really bank on some real income. Yes,
there's huge fluctuation uh within your
checks week to week, but you know that
look, if I'm going to perform a certain
level over the course of the year, I'm
going to have, you know, a good enough
income to kind of cover my needs. Now,
if you want to expand to a large team,
then that can be substantially more.
But, uh, you know, component one is the
financials. You really have to manage
that because you're an independent
contractor. You know, you I was with a
spreadsheet, you know, trying to figure
out how much I was spending each week or
each month and trying to survive, but
you also don't know your earnings,
right? You could make $100,000 one week
or you could be in the red if you had a
a small check in in a team traveling
with you. So, those those swings are
real. Um, but the lifestyle is probably
as much the real part, which is I tell
people all the time, it's the most
unbelievable life. You know, my spring
for 10 years was, you know, Monte Carlo,
Barcelona, Rome, Madrid, Paris, London.
I'm naming the best six cities in the
world, and we did them, you know, over
the course of 2 months in the spring.
It's amazing, but you got to be
comfortable 250 days a year in a hotel.
You're living out of two to three
suitcases. So, it's um it's a huge
adjustment for a lot of people. If you
like the comforts of your own home, you
know, this this may not be the best
career for you, but it is a fascinating
experience to see the world. You get
backstage passes to see all the best
stuff that these cities have to offer.
So, it's a it's a pretty wonderful
experience at all at the same time.
>> Can only imagine. I mean, I'm thinking
back to when you just said Monte Carlo
there. This might have been my peak
tennis viewing experience when my study
abroad semester. I met up with my mixed
doubles partner in Monte Carlo and we
went to see the semi-finals of the 2015
tournament. Jookovic, Nadal playing each
other right there. I mean, this was just
>> that was just after you retired, right?
That was like one year after you
retired. Retired in 16, so
you're talking about so much of this
though from like the doubles
perspective. And I think that's what's
so what a lot of people don't get to
hear about because you see you know of
course how the sing a lot of the top
singles players I mean these are people
who have what 10 tens of millions of
dollars in contra in um endorsements and
money. How much of that equation is
happening on the double side? You know
are they is Nike and all these other
sponsors are they paying doubles players
that much to wear their kits? No, I
would say on the double side, you know,
roughly 75% of your earnings are coming
from Encort, right? You might have
>> that's got to be the total opposite of
the single side of the equation.
>> Yeah. I don't have the exact numbers,
but sure. Right. I think in in in the
vicinity, Absolutely. So, I think prize
money is the main driver for the
majority of the tour. Yes. As you get to
the very top, you know, the sponsorships
and the offc court earnings will will
trump that. But yeah, absolutely. So
coming back to that because I heard
somebody told me that you were the
genius behind the mixed doubles
tournament this year. I would think a
lot of you then would want to have this
you know big prize pool you know
five-fold what it was in the previous
year have the real doubles players get
access to that.
>> Yeah. No this was this was a tough one
right and I obviously received a lot of
phone calls from from close friends on
tour that again this was this was an
event that given the way that we built
it up they weren't the majority of them
weren't going to be able to play in it.
We had those discussions. I think the
first step we wanted to do was make sure
they were financially whole. So what we
did with our increases this year, we
took our regular scheduled increases and
doubles, which were substantial. Then we
took all of the money from mixed doubles
from last year that was won by doubles
players and put that in on top of the
other increases. So I think a lot of the
doubles rounds this year were up 30%
from last year. So there was huge
earnings for the doubles side. I think
the other thing we wanted to do, which
was hard for some of the doubles players
to hear, but we wanted to shine a light
on doubles like never before. And as the
doubles, mixed doubles being played with
doubles players, there wasn't a lot of
people tuning in. ESPN wasn't really
airing it. Fans weren't turning up for
the matches in droves, right? What we
were able to do was to take mixed
doubles, something that no one talked
about, no one was really watching, put
it in Arthur Stadium with 24,000 people.
So, I think that step has been
incredible. We're super happy with it.
You know, where we go forward now is to
have a lot of conversations and say,
"Okay, what's next?" Right? You know,
how do we grow this to make this
something bigger? Do we want to adjust
the dates? to adjust the format to be
adjust the entry policies and that'll be
you know the next couple months of
analysis but for step one I think it was
a it was a big success.
>> We're speaking right now with Eric
Burak. He's heads up player relations
here at the USA where he is director.
We're at the US Open. It is Tim Stenc
and Molly Smith. She's Bloomberg News
economics editor. Eric, um I want to
talk a little bit about what the youth
program looks like right now in the US.
You grew up playing in the US. You
played college
>> in the US. What do you hear from the
folks about the differences now in terms
of interest among young American kids
and access that they have to tennis?
Because that is the whole purpose of the
USA here. Can you quantify for that
compared to when you were growing up?
>> You know, I I don't I don't work on that
side of the business. I'm not going to
rattle off the numbers off the edge of
my tongue. I know we are in I think at
least 5 years now of consecutive growth
with participation, which
>> so it's looking good,
>> which is looking good, which is great.
You know, there was sort of a COVID bump
that we had because it was one of the
first sports you could really come back
and play. I think we were maybe
concerned that that was only a co bump,
but the growth has sustained, which is
which is really encouraging. I think
we're seeing lots of growth in, you
know, different economic diverse
environments, which is great. Um, youth
participation is up, which is good. Um,
I think the US Open, I mean, we look at
this, not only is the revenue from this
event going into the USA, which has the
mission to grow the game, but we look at
this as a 3-week festival to showcase
the sport to our country, you know,
motivate more people to go out and play
the sport. And so everything we do is
from a lens of yeah, we want to earn
money so we can put the money into the
sport, but let's also excite people
about