Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. This is Bloomberg business Week Daily reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus global business finance and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast with Carol Masser and Tim Stenebeck on Bloomberg Radio.
That's Molly Smith. She's Bloomberg News Economics Editor. She's in for Carol mass Re live from the US Open. I'm Tim Stenebek. It is Bloomberg Business Week Daily. We start with the latest from our nation's capital and the emergency hearing about Lisa Cook. This is Friday's hearing on Federieser of Governor Lisa Cook's motion for a temporary restraining order blocking her firing by President Trump. I want to bring in Michael McKee. He's Bloomberg News Economics and Policy correspondent.
He joins us in the Bloomberg Interactive at Brokers Studio. Mike Judge Cobb grilled both sides, but ended the hearing without a ruling on Cook's request for an emergency ruling.
What's the latest.
Well, we're probably not going to hear anything until Tuesday at the earliest. What happened was the cook people basically applied for a temporary restraining order to keep her in her job until the matter could be heard as far as whether she.
Should keep her job or not.
The next step would be an injunction to keep her in her job if that were the case, and the judge sort of collapsed those two ideas with the ascent of both sides, So there was a longer hearing than we expected as she questioned both sides on what's going to happen, but then gave the lawyers until Tuesday to file their next motions.
So it was a signal we're not going to get anything over the weekend.
Okay, so maybe we can enjoy the holiday weekend or perhaps try to at least.
Especially people who are at the US.
Time will oh.
Well, I mean, we have it's nice here, but we're also very focused on what's going on back in Manhattan. And so tell us, Mike, this was with a district court judge. Everyone's talking about how this is going to be a Supreme Court matter. What are the steps between now and getting to the Supreme Court.
Well, this judge is going to have to rule on whether or not to put a temporary hold on the president's firing of Lisa Cook at some point, whether it's Tuesday or later next week. And then if she says that the president can fire her, that changes the narration because then the president would probably move to replace her fairly quickly, and you create a whole new set of legal problems there because the ultimate case has not been decided.
But if she does allow Cook to stay on.
The job, then what we would see is the administration go to the Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals, this is what's happened in previous attempts by Trump to fire people, has basically let the president proceed. Now we know that this is a little bit of a different situation because the Supreme Court carved out an exemption for the FED saying that somebody has to be fired for cause, and so that would that decision would turn on what is the definition of for cause, which is what they
spend an awful lot of time on today. And then if both sides, whichever side loses, that the appeals Court takes it to the Supreme Court. I think that would be the basic question. What does it mean to say the president can fire something someone for cause? According to the Cook side, the president is using just allegations, nothing proven, and that doesn't rise to the level of a cause
to fire somebody. And the Trump side says, well, Trump is the president and basically he can do whatever he wants. It's up to him to decide what for cause means. So it's a fundamental question that is probably going to end up at a Supreme Court.
Is that the Justice Department attorney Yakov Roth's argument. Essentially here it's whether or not to include something that happened or could have happened before she became a governor on the Federal Reserve. Does the timing of this matter, Does the intent of this matter?
None of that matters.
According to mister Roth, the president has the absolute right, according to the administration, to determine what four cause means. Now that opens up a can of worms that the Cook people are trying to spread around on this fishing expedition by the president. Because if that's the case, then
the law is somewhat moved. There's no point in saying fore cause, because the president could fire somebody whenever he wants, because he can make up whatever he wants to be for cause, and so that's going to be kind of the decision that Judge has to make, that is, does this rise to the level of four cause?
Does the president have that right now?
It's a tough situation for Judge Cobb, except that she's not.
Going to be the last word on this by any means.
Well, this is what I wanted to actually come back to you on Mike, because I can see a situation in which a ruling comes out it's not to Trump's liking, and Gia Cobb was appointed by Biden, and I wonder how much more this gets politicized potentially than if the ruling does not go his way.
Is that something that's coming up in your reporting at all?
Well, the question, kind of Molly, is could it be any more politicized? They spent quite a bit of time today talking about how many tweets that Bill Poulti the Federal Housing Administration, a Federal Housing Agency administrator, has put out on this something over thirty tweets accusing Cook of doing something illegal without offering any proof. So it has
become quite politicized already. I think that the biggest question is going to be whether the President is able to get rid of her, and that would raise questions on Wall Street of politicization that haven't quite hit the markets yet, because I think the traders are basically thinking that the president will lose if he wins. That's going to raise an awful lot of questions about how policy is going to be made going forward.
I do want to talk a little bit about the economic data that we got earlier today. Before we do that, I just want to bring everybody some flavor and color about where we are at the US Open right now.
You might hear a.
Little bit of a Ruckustan see behind us a lot of fans. It's because Carlos Alcoraz, who just won in straight sets, is sitting just a couple of feet from.
Us doing interviews with the media here.
So you have a ton of people right behind us trying to make Carlos Carlo's attention, and you.
Know, we just want to talk about economic data. That's what we're trying to do.
Do you think Carlos wants to come on to talk about the PC reports.
That I think he was.
I don't think he was paying any attention to the PC report before his match.
Molly, you don't think so.
No, you were, though, So let's get.
Well, that's what I would want to know.
I want to know exactly what happened to inflation of the month of July before I take to Arthur ash Stadium.
Okay, well, let's bring in much McKee on that. In the last few minutes that we have, Mike, the data that we got bang in line with expectations today.
Any surprises in there.
The surprises came on the income and spending side, on on the price side. It's not really any any kind of surprise anymore for the PCE, because the data come in and other releases and economists can pull them out and put them together before we even get the numbers.
A bit of us increase in.
The core number on a year over year basis to two point nine percent, But whether that leads the Fed to do one thing or another kind of depends on whether you already think the Fed should be cutting rates or on hold. It's certainly not near two percent, but the month over month number went down a tenth, and so if you're thinking you can cutying, well, maybe we're seeing a little bit of restraint in inflation. The income
numbers came in strong though. In terms of wages and salaries, they were up six tenths of a percent after a one tenth rise in June, so Americans had more money and they did spend.
You can also.
Parse that by saying a lot of that was on automobiles, as people try to buy cars ahead of the price increases. The automakers have promised for the new models coming out soon, so it doesn't really lead us anywhere. I haven't looked deep enough into the PCE inflation numbers though to see what the price of haircuts did.
Maybe you can ask Carlos stat.
I was gonna say that.
I always brings it home.
Mike McKee, Lieberg News International Economics and Policy correspondent. He is on top of it all, whether it's everything from the FED or what they are talking about here at the US Open, which yes, does include Carlos Alcaraz's new haircut, which way we learned earlier this week it was.
Sort of a mistake.
Yeah, I need to still like read up fully on this. It was something that like did his brother end up?
I don't know who did it, but you know, he said, sometimes you just have to start fresh, and that's what he did here and Tiofo.
Gave him a pretty hard Yeah.
All good friends there. I mean the hilarious part.
If you've seen anything in Carlos's matches, he kind of puts his hand through said it's like, oh wait, I don't know, it's kind of funny.
Stay with us.
More from Bloomberg Business Week Daily coming up after this.
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This last trading day of September? Can you believe August August?
Excuse me?
Right, yeah, it feels like September with the decline that we're seeing today.
Oh my god.
Yeah. Rough, I mean we were just we just had a record yesterday. Fibes today not as good.
Yeah, yeah, really getting hit.
I mean you think it was the PC data?
No, I don't.
I mean, because it wasn't that. Yeah, it was in line with expectations. Just I don't know.
Maybe I had to give up some gains after yesterday's rally. But I mean, our next guy's going to tell us all about is. We're going to bring her in right now. We have Jillian Wolf coming in to join us. She's global equity strategist with Bloomberg Intelligence in the Interactive broker studio.
Hey, Jillian, thanks for joining us today.
Thank you. I hope you guys are enjoying the time at the US Open today. I'm a bit jealous.
Oh, we are having a lot of fun, but we had to come back to talk to you because we have the clothes coming up. Tell us about what the trade of all today and what we're looking into going into four o'clock.
Sure, I mean we're officially at the end of the two Q earning season right now, with Nvidia having reported. I think what was a lot of providing a lot of fuel for this rally was that earnings expectations going into the second quarter were actually quite low, and it provided a really easy environment for companies to be because the brunt of the tariff impact was expected to start hitting now. But in reality, what we saw was that tariffs were not actually that influential on these two Q
earnings reports. So what we saw were massive beats which really helped drive the equity rally. But I think now investors are starting to look forward to how tariffs might start to hurt those three Q and four Q earnings and we might not get as much fuel from those easy beats that we've been getting over the past few weeks. So a little bit of lowering momentum on that side. We've also just seen a lot of profit taking in the megacap stocks, like you said in video, down still
quite a bit today. Tech broadly still looks strong for US. We posted a note last week that on median tech was holding up. But because the indices are so heavily concentrated in these large names, it distorts the picture a little bit. If you have a few names going down, particularly in Vidia being one of them, you're going to start to think, oh, tech must be collapsing everywhere because it's driving all of these indices so heavily.
On the tariff side of things, Why is it taking, in your view, relatively and what I would consider a long time to hit earnings or to at least hit the stock prices of these companies. I thought the market looked forward and you know, there's nothing clear in ahead of us than having to pay tariffs.
It's a great question, and I have a twofold answer. The first is that a lot of companies did stock up on inventories bracing for these tariffs, So there is a little bit of a stockpile now where they're not necessarily going to have to pay tariffs on imports that are going to hit. We did have this ninety day pause on what the worst of the tariffs were going
to be. I think what we're seeing in the market is a little bit of relief that what was supposed to play out on a liberation Day doesn't appear to be happening. Even though the tariff situation were worse off right now than we were, let's say, in September, because we aren't as bad as analysts had it originally expected in April. They're ultimately seeing this as good news and positive upside the fact that company margins didn't just collapse in two Q, which is what some of the concerns
going into this quarter were. But we definitely have to keep an eye out on three Q and four Q. There's definitely notes coming out on earnings calls, and companies are still not entirely sure. I just think we avoided the worst case scenario, so markets are breathing a little bit of a sigh of relief, but definitely on trepidacious terms right now.
So, Julian, you're saying here, the tariffs haven't been that impactful to earning so far. Ninety nine percent of the year I write about the US economy, one percent I write about Tennis. But when we're trying about the economy, it hasn't really impacted inflation that much either. We got the PCEE data for July this morning. Goods prices were actually down in the month and services, kind of mirroring
what we saw on the CPI earlier in August. That's where it seems like inflation is really pecking back up again. And if I were a stock investor, I feel like that has got to be.
A much scarier omen for me.
You know, this isn't the tariff driven goods inflation that we had the luxury of thinking that might look through.
This is something that is perhaps more persistent.
It's persistent, and it's supply side. We published a note and I had mentioned it last week that we were already seeing producer prices accelerate faster than consumer prices, and that's really a red flag for us because it means that companies are struggling to push these costs onto the consumer, and it also begs the question of how much rate cuts could actually help at this point. If the inflation is coming from the supply side of things, rate cuts
can't really do as much. They can help release the burden on consumers, but if things just become more expensive for companies themselves to purchase, they're going to have to pass that on to the consumer ultimately. And they make it some relief from those cuts. They may pay less interest on their car payments or their credit card payments, which could allow them to pay more for goods. But the idea that we're not going to see inflation flow
through eventually, I think is a little bit misguided. We're just starting to see companies start to pay more for these inputs, and it is going to take some time to gradually flow through. Remember, we were on a ninety day tear off pause that technically did restart just this month, so we're only going to start to see this data really hit the economy in the coming weeks and months. Now.
Hey, Jillian, before we let you go, you and the team out with a note overnight about value having a banner year in Europe. What's the outlook in your view on value stocks over in Europe.
It's interesting because we haven't seen that same thesis play out in the US. Value stocks in Europe are really beat up, but they've been beat up for a long time, and a lot of this is now just people buying what they think could be a solid deal because it's just so cheap in the US. Even the cheapest stocks aren't that cheap by comparison. They're may be cheaper compared to some of the highest mag seven stocks, but cheap in the US doesn't actually need cheap relative to the globe.
So we're definitely seeing investors maybe moving a little bit more towards safety, trying to pick up on some of these beat up stocks in Europe, and we're seeing value do quite well as a result.
Gillian Wolf on the Bloomberg Intelligence ATM Equity Strategist over there, have a great weekend, Have a great long weekend. Appreciate you joining us from the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers Studio.
This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg business app. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station. Just say Alexa play Bloomberg.
Eleven thirty.
We are at the US Open just outside of Arthur Ash Stadium in Flushing, New York. We're surrounded by about seventy thousand of our closest friends and also by somebody who joins us on site every year during our US Open broadcast. Kirsten Coreo is back with us. She's Chief Commercial Officer of the USTA, the owner and operator of the US Open. What does she do well, If it has to do with money and bringing it in, that's
what she does. Think of course, ticket sales, hospital global metiaites, sponsorships, digital strategy, business intelligence and more. Kirsten, how are you good to see you? It's once a year we get to see you.
It's great to see you.
It's the busiest time of the year for you.
It's the most wonderful time of the year.
Well, it's the time truly where you guys all live in a hotel do right near here because you are here twenty four to seven actually not watching any tennis because you're working the whole time.
That's right.
So let's talk a little bit about how.
The revenue generation is looking for the year. I mean, three years in a row of record breaking attendance. What can you tell us about just the business this year going into the US.
Open, Well, I can tell you said, three years in a row of record breaking attendance, this should be a fourth year in a row of record breaking not just attendance, but over lots of different areas that we measure. So attendance, yes, viewership across through the first round, we're up thirty six percent on our domestic ESPN, ABC, ESPN two coverage, which is amazing. We actually had the second highest viewership and it's in Italy's of tennis through the first round, amazing,
a lot of great Italian players. Merchandise is up double digit percentages, ticket sales up double digit percentages. And with the opening Sunday start to the men's and women's main draw singles play and men's and women's doubles main draw play, we're up double digit percentages and going to like break records and ticket sales and all the per caps related to that as well.
So it sounds like things are obviously moving in the right direction on the attendance side of things. I'm curious about the balance between the criticisms last year about there were too many people here because everybody wanted to be here. How did you balance that this year with a different strategy when it came to ticket sales in terms of like tapping certain ticket sales at different times to make it so people could actually get around here.
Yeah, it's interesting.
I mean, we never want to restrict people that want to come from being able to come, But at the same time, we want to ensure that the people who are here on site and have you know, bought their tickets and paid good money and looked forward to planning to being here on site have a phenomenal fan experience. So we did make the hard decision to reduce the amount of tickets that we would sell over this very busy Labor Day weekend. So yesterday was the first day
of that implementation. We did start to implement some changes to better manage crowds through the thoroughfares, better manage how we're spreading out competition and content across the different courts, practice courts and competition courts, so that people have more options around the site to experience the different content and enjoy it in a more free flowing way and not in a crushed way alongside seventy thousand of their friends.
Well, just to recognize what you had said before, Kirsen about spreading out the tennis, and also to make sure that people are getting good value for their money because it is expensive to come here.
Something I think that a lot of people.
Who I've talked to have said is about having that Sunday start. Having the first round played now over three days instead of two, it is technically diluting the value of the ticket now.
No, I don't know how much tennis you watch simultaneously, but it's not usually.
More than one match.
Actually spreading out the first round over three days has really helped spread the content out in a way that's actually offered more content to more people so that they can see more. It's been easier on the athletes in many ways. It's hard to spread out the main job singles in first round in two days. Three rounds sorry, three days is what you find in other Grand Slams as well.
It's quite common.
So in our case, it gave more content across the courts in a way that didn't crush the courts across two days. Now you can spread it across three days and seventy thousand more people can experience it.
How should we think about the revenue breakdown of the US Open ticket sales versus concessions versus sponsorships. I mean on the sponsorship side, everybody's here and it's also all the familiar names that have been with the US Open for decades at this point, what's the revenue breakdown?
So it's traditional in the way that every other live event property, whether it's sports or entertainment, is tickets, sales, hospitality, sponsorship. Media rights is a huge portion of how this event is fueled. So not every event gets to sell their media rights and is responsible for that. We are like the other Grand Slams.
And you do the negotiations for it.
We should know we do, and we work with our partners at IMG to help us worldwide.
So what about it?
Sorry, I just want to push on this a little bit with in terms of revenue, Like, if we think about it from the perspective of okay, ticket sales bring in this much revenue. Does is that the most in terms of overall revenue for the US Open? Or does sponsorships bring in.
It is ticket sales, ticket sales and premium leads.
Okay, so that's still the majority of where the revenue comes from.
Okay, right, And keeping with it on the ticket sales, I mean, this is something that you know, as we've said, it is an expensive experience.
It is a premium experience.
You know you are getting certainly I would say a lot for what you pay for to come here. But it is something that people do talk about that they get frustrated with how much how quickly the sales go over to the resale market.
Is that something that is in your control whatsoever?
I mean, to be able to sell more tickets at face value before the resale market takes over and jocks them up to however many multiples of the face.
Value per Well, there's two key factors at work here.
One is the overwhelming demand that we experience for the event. Two is the fact that we are in New York State and resale cannot be restricted legally, so we are unable to restrict how many tickets are resold, at what price points they're resold, and how people choose to resale
tickets that they've purchased. So on the demand side, we renew the equivalent of full season tickets at about ninety nine percent every year, and we did work hard to make more volume of tickets available, both through the Sunday start as well as for just ensuring that we had
as much inventory as possible. For the American Express individual ticket presale, again sold out of that inventory within a couple of hours, and again in the public end sal same thing, sold out of the inventory within a couple of hours, and at which point in time people can choose to resell tickets if that's their if that's their desire.
I think it's important to note that our individual ticket price average sales price point across all the events, all of the sessions, all of the venues, is one hundred and ninety dollars the average resale ticket price. It's over five hundred that it's sold for. So when people may may say, oh, it's an expensive ticket, unfortunately for us, we have to bear the brunt of that perception. But it's not the ticket price that we set.
Yeah, we're just if you guys are just joining us here. We've got Carson Coreo with us.
She's chief commercial officer at the USTA, talking all things about revenue ticket generation, all of that that's going on here at the US Open. So, Kison, you've brought up something interesting. I actually didn't know about this. That this has to do with maybe state rules about the resale market and what can can't be restricted.
Is that something then that you guys, you.
Know, obviously as a huge event spoor here in the state of New York. Is that something that you try to work with the state on to say, like, hey, you know, we want to you know, maybe change the rules in the state.
Is there any way that we can work on this?
Listen, We're happy to talk to any state body, legislative body, or representative at any point in time. Our intention is to ensure that fans have an opportunity to come here and experience the US Open and tennis are inspired to play tennis and have an opportunity to come many days if they wish to, to the extent that the state wants to work with us to offer more accessibility beyond the six days of the free open to the public fan week. We're always happy to have a conversation.
But does it also tell you that you could be charging more for tickets? I know that's like not a popular thing. For me to say. But if you think about it, the delta between the average ticket price of a resale and the average ticket price where you're saying, there's a lot of money right from the table there, So it seems like the willingness to pay is a lot higher than you guys are marketing it for right now.
It is, but it's a balance, you know, It's a balance between wanting to retain accessibility or for all types of fans and at the same time being an event that has an obligation to deliver net proceeds back to growing the game. So it is a balance. I don't think you'll ever see us go to the highest end of the market demand on a regular grounds pass, but in some cases we will sell that high end experience to the person who's willing to invest that much.
Well, the high end experience isn't a lot of that. What's going to be part of this new renovation in ash, right, that's going to be bringing more luxury suites also just thousands.
Of more tickets in general to the stadium.
Can you tell us a little bit more about this renovation that's in progress in twenty twenty seven, right, That's what it's going to be ready.
So Arthur ash Stadium amazing stadium, largest tennis stadium in the world, purpose built for nineteen ninety seven. We've come a long way since ninety seven, and fan expectations have evolved and changed, and we need to evolve and change to meet where they are and what they expect for the next generation.
So the transformation will see the addition.
Of two thousand new incremental court side seats. We have the smallest lower bowl in all of North America by proportion, perhaps, and we have more way more demand for those than we can satisfy. So we're looking to be able to offer more accessibility both for fans that want that court side seed as well as fans that have been longtime subscribers in the next level and the lowge level. That number one on their wish list is the ability to upgrade.
As I mentioned with the ninety eight or ninety nine percent renewal rate, they don't have a lot of options, but we will have suites moving up by about twelve feet, same number of suites, but they will be larger with more square footage, more fixed seats for people to enjoy and entertain guests. And that's been long on the feedback lists from our suitet clients.
How do you guys at the USDA talk about influencers and the way that they're part of the us OPEN now? I feel like the last few years it's just exploded in terms of social media.
Yes, yes, influencers, content creators.
Are they part of officially part of media here now?
So there is something called non media credential that we've trialed this year for a elect group of individuals that may positively be able to report on and influence audiences to be interested in tennis. Our mission is all about growing the game and inspiring people to play more often so to the extent that there are influencers content creators that can help us leverage the us OPEN to do that, we're really interested in exploring it. That said, you know,
it's the wild West out there. It's really challenging to try to harness that passion, I will say, in a way that's productive for the entire ecosystem and protects our partners who have been with us.
For so long here.
Well, I do feel like I even see them outside of the gates at this point. I mean, the popularity is just so huge. Kirsten Koreo. Always good. When you join us, it means we're at the US Open. We love being here and we love chatting with you. Kuston Coreo. She's chief Commercial Officer of the USTA and she might get to watch a little tennis. Look for her in the box next to the celebrities later in the tournament.
This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily. Stay with us.
More from Bloomberg Business Week Daily coming up after this.
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We're going to bring it now.
Eric Bouderak, he is director of US Open Player Relations at the USTA, also a former professional player known for your doubles pro US.
Thanks so much for joining us.
Eric, great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Right here outside of Arthur Ash. How's the tournament been for you so far? It's only probably the crazy three weeks of your life, it is.
It's been busy, and with it with the fan week and all the events we have going on the front end, it feels like a full month. But again, what better place to be if you love tennis. This is the center of it all, So it couldn't be.
Better explain to everybody what it means to be the director of player relations here.
Yeah, so I joined this role about nine years ago, straight off the court, literally ended my career in Core ten right behind us and it was in the office, you know, a month later. 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 were seen in Fan Week with Stars of the Open, the Mixed Devils tournament, but really just everything that the players touch, which is so many things, right from the transportation and the hotels to the prize money and all the everything that goes on with the biggest events they participate.
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 kind of like what goes into it? I think a lot of people romanticize the idea of being a pro athlete, 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. You're spending a lot of time on airplanes yep, 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.
It is.
So there's a lot to that equation.
I mean, first the financial side, yes, right, you're you're traveling the world, and how you need to travel depends very much on kind of what level sport you're at, right, And I equate a lot of it to baseball, sort of single A, double A, triple A. The single A 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 one hundred and ten thousand dollars. Okay, now we can start to really bank on some real income. Yes, there's huge fluctuation 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 you know, component one is the financial is you really have to manage that because you're an independent contractor. You know, I was with a spreadsheet, you know, trying to figure out how much I was spent each week or really a month, and trying to survive. But you also don't know your earnings, right. You could make one hundred thousand dollars one week, or you could be in the red if you had a small check and a team traveling with you.
So those swings are real.
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 ten 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 two months in the spring.
It's amazing.
But you've got to be comfortable two hundred and fifty days a year in a hotel. You're living out of two to three suitcases, so it's it's a huge adjustment for a lot of people. If you like the comforts of your own home, you know, 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 pretty wonderful experience at all the.
Same time, totally imagine.
I mean, I'm thinking back to when you just said Monti Carlo. There, this might have been my peak tennis viewing experience when.
I study abroad.
Semester, I met up with my mixed doubles partner in Monte Carlo and we went to see the semifinals of the twenty fifteen tournament, Djokovic Nadal playing each other. Right there, I mean, this was just just.
After you were tired, right that was year after your retired sixteen.
Yeah, so you're talking about so much of this though from like the doubles perspective. 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 ten tens of millions of dollars in contra and endorsements and money. How much of that equation is happening on the double side? You know,
they is Nike and all these other sponsors. Are they paying doubles players that much to wear their kids?
No?
I would say that in the double side, if you know roughly seventy five percent of your earnings are coming from encore, right you might.
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 the in the vicinity, absolutely so. I think prize money is the main driver for the majority of the tour as you get to the very top, you know, the sponsorships and the off court earnings we 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 fivefold what it was in the previous year.
Have the real doubles players get access to that?
Yeah, No, was 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, and we had those discussions. I think the first up 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 in doubles, which were substantial. Then we took all of the money from mixed doubles from last year it 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 thirty percent from last year, so there's huge earnings for the double side. I think the other thing we wanted to do, which was hard for some of the double player to hear, but we want to shine a light on doubles like never before. And as the doubles mixed doubles are 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
and 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 Rash Stadium with twenty four thousand 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, we adjust the format to, we adjust the entry policies, and that'll be you know, the next couple of months of analysis. But for step one, I think it was it was a big success.
We're speaking right now with Eric Buerak, he's heads up player relations here at the USTA where he is a director we're at the US Open. It is Tim's Kinnebeck and Molly Smith. She's Bloomberg News economics editor.
Eric. 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 about the difference is now in terms of interest among young American kids and access that they have to tennis, because that is the.
Whole purpose of the USTA. Here can you quantify for that compared to when you were growing up?
You know, I 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 five years now consecutive growth with participation which was 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 COVID 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.
Youth participation is up, which is good.
I think the US Open, I mean, we look at this not only is the revenue from this event going into the USTA, which has the mission to grow the game, but we look at this as a three 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 playing back to the mixed doubles people.
Sorry, we'll be going to hear today.
Sorry as the Bloomberg News following on Eric for those listening, he's still okay.
I'm good.
On the waiver Before you got here, We're all said, I'm all right. But we knew that people love playing mixed doubles. We wanted to We want everyone to see that so they go to their clubs and play mixed doubles, you know.
So that was one of the reasons. So we're looking at it through that lens as well.
Totally.
I mean that's what I played in college. I played for the club team. It's Syracuse, but you played actually real college tennis, and I want to hear about what that transition is like to go from college to the pro circuit, because it's tennis is a bit unique in that way. It's not the way of a traditional feeder the way other sports are, you know, the NBA and playing in a professional football as well. That like college is such a huge driver of where your career is,
it's not really the same in tennis. So can you talk about that transition and if more people are seeing college is maybe a gateway.
To the pro tour?
So I think, I mean, I played Division II college tennis, which is really not.
The route to pro tennis.
I don't think anyone really did it before me, and no one did it afterwards, so that I wouldn't I wouldn't recommend that route.
I somehow found the loophole.
I played D three and I never turned pro.
See that gain.
Yeah, A lot of people call me and asked me, and it's a kind of a crazy story I worked out. So anyway, But if we focus on the Division IE level, which is really you know, the reality of a pipeline into the pros, I think through a couple of things. One, the college life has become more and more appealing to players who need those years to train and get better.
So those you know you can you.
Can train from eighteen to twenty two, have all your expenses covered at a really high level, and especially in the men's side, where you develop a little bit later in life, right, it's more likely to kind of give you that time to really go off on the tour.
Number Two, with.
The nil you know, now these players can actually not only get a free education, but they can earn some money, build up a little bit of a net worth to go out on tour and have some savings to take that money on tour. I mean kem Nory playing Djokovic tonight, he's straight out of TCU. I mean not just on the men's sides, but we're seeing women Emmin Nvara play college tennis.
Peyton Stearns played college tennis.
So there's a lot of players coming off college tennis to play professionally in.
These days, and like it was even twenty thirty years ago, a lot of players coming from outside of the US to the US to play D One. Do you think the nil thing is going to make it even more so that you know, the next Carlos Alparez skips going right pro and comes to the US and plays college.
Maybe I don't think that Alcarez will skip, but the cam Norri's.
Of the world will will continue to skip.
If you're seventeen years old and you're winning, you know Internet, you know, with Grand Slam Junior Championships, and you know you're still going to the IMGs of the world are signing you and Nike wants you, you're going pro. There's there's too much opportunity for that group. The ones just below that who don't have huge contracts being offered to them, those are the ones that are going to go to college.
They're going to take those nil deals and then they're going to hopefully go to the tour, use it as a kind of a training ground to get ready for the tour.
Yeah, there's just so much to be played for, especially on the junior circuit.
There.
So, Eric Budurak, thanks so much for joining us here. This is Eric Mudak. He's the jacker of US Open Player Relations at the USCA.
Thanks again for coming with us here.
You guys from the set appreciate it.
So we're still sitting here outside of Arthurs Stadium, Tim, you're gonna stay for.
The night session tonight, you know, I'll stay for a little bit of it. Yeah.
I don't think I'm in the state untill like one am. Like you and I did a couple of years ago, though. Yeah, that was that was till two am.
That was crazy. Yeah, that was crazy. We'll see what happens.
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