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The Hard (Court) Sell
Last year's Pilot Pen tennis tourney hit a low ebb at the gate — and the cash register. And CEO Mike Davies couldn't be more optimistic
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Business New Haven
8/10/98
By: Michael C. Bingham
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Despite enduring a $1.3 million loss on the 1997 Pilot Pen International tennis tournament, Mike Davies' enthusiasm for the future of big-time tennis in the Elm City remains undimmed.
Native Welshman Davies is president and CEO of Connecticut Professional Tennis, which will stage consecutive week-long ATP (men's) and USTA (women's) tour events beginning August 17 at the Connecticut Tennis Center. Davies and CPT Chairman Butch Buchholz, who operate the highly successful Lipton Championships in Key Biscayne, Fla., took over the reins of the New Haven men's event in April 1997 from Jim Westhall.
Earlier this year Buchholz, Davies and their partners (chiefly members of the Buchholz family and a handful of private investors) acquired the rights to a USTA event previously held in Stone Mountain, Ga. It will debut at the CTC the week after the men's event, and just one week before the U.S. Open in New York.
When civic boosters talk about sports marketing as an economic-development engine for greater New Haven, big-time tennis is the shiniest bauble in their arsenal. After all, it has brought internationally recognized names such as Andre Agassi, Goran Ivanisevic, John McEnroe and (for a 1995 exhibition) Martina Navratilova to New Haven.
But it hasn't attracted crowds and corporate sponsors to match the star power of the players. Last year the week-long men's event attracted just 85,000 attendees - the lowest figure in the tourney's seven-year tenure in the Elm City.
But coming onto the scene with scarcely four months to prepare, Davies and Buchholz knew they were in for the worst last year. “We knew going in that we were going to be facing a deficit for sure in the first year,” Davies says. “Our job was to turn it around and try to get more box sales and sponsorships.”
Coming off the 1997 event, CPT officials looked forward to having a full year of preparation - and sales - for this year's men's event. But then in May arose the opportunity to bring the distaff tourney to New Haven - and Davies, Buchholz & Co. were faced once again with the tall order of organizing and selling an event from scratch - and a perilously short time span in which to do so. “If we hadn't stepped in when we did with our offer,” Davies says, “[the USTA] could very well have put it in another city.”
They responded aggressively - aided in no small part by luck. Two of the players who committed early on to New Haven - Jana Novotna and Arantxa Sanchez Vicario - turned out to be champions of two of the three Grand Slam tournaments played so far this year (respectively, Wimbledon and the French Open). The People magazine star quality of 17-year-old Russian Anna Kournikova sells tickets as well.
Like the stratospheric stakes for which the players perform, tournament promoters such as Davies and Buchholz often must feel as though they're performing without a net. Both the men's and women's New Haven events were landed by CPT, in essence, with just enough time in the calendar to fail.
But Davies is sanguine about the risks. “We knew [success] wasn't going to happen overnight,” he says. “But because of the international nature of professional tennis, there are tennis tournaments every single week of the year. You have to seize opportunities as they arise” - and damn the torpedoes.
The day after last year's event, “We said, 'We need a big star, drawing power - we've got to go get [No. 1] Pete Sampras,” Davies recalls. Sampras had customarily spend the third week in August playing in the competing RCA Hardcourt Championships in Indianapolis. But Sampras had been mired in a bit of a slump [ended when he won Wimbledon last month] and, like the superstitious athlete he is, decided to change his routine leading up to the U.S. Open.
Buoyed by Sampras' commitment and interest in the contiguous women's event, ticket sales for the Pilot Pen are running well ahead of last year's pace, and Davies hopes to attract as many as 150,000 fans to the two-week extravaganza.
But a more lasting foundation for success in New Haven, if it is to be built, will be built on continuing relationships with corporate sponsors, both local, national and international. Because both the men's and women's finals will be televised nationally, CPT salespeople can sell that to potential sponsors (although national TV's value to local corporations is more ego gratification than dollars and cents).
“We say [to corporations], 'We do think there's promotional value here to your customers. We are on television in 150 countries, and we think this is a very international event for Connecticut,'” Davies explains of the pitch.
Hand-in-hand with corporate sponsorships are box-seat sales for both events. “The goal of any major sporting event is to sell your boxes, or series, tickets,” Davies says. “That is a very, very important factor.” Despite last year's crunch, the CPT did not yield to the temptation to push single-session sales at the expense of boxes for the entire week. This, Davies concedes, “may have hurt our sales.”
This year the promoters are offering greater flexibility in terms of series packages (a fan can buy an evening-session-only package, for instance), and buyers of four-seat boxes get both men's and women's tourneys for, in effect, the price of one. “There's more flexibility there,” Davies explains, “without [diluting] the integrity of buying a box and having the right to renew that next year.”
When he and Buchholz first arrived in New Haven, Davies says they asked themselves, “Was this event going to be successful, be first-class, or is it just slipping? We're dedicated to making this a big-time event, but it will take a while. But this year is very encouraging for us.”
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