Global business news twenty four hours a day at Bloomberg dot Com, the Radio, plus mobile lact and on your radio. This is a Bloomberg Business Flag, Bloomberg World Headquarters. I'm Charlie Palot of the Dow and the SMP five hundred index, both trading lower. Naz DAK is higher. Right now stocks are falling amid tumbling crowd prices and sluggish manufacturing data. We've got West Texas Intermediate Crew down three and a half percent, dropping a dollar fifty four now at forty
three sixteen. A barrel Brent Crew down three percent, Gold up five forty thirt thirteen, a gain of four tenths of one percent. The Tenure up three thirty seconds, yield one point five seven percent. SMP down five to sixty five, a drop of two tens of one percent down. Industrials down twenty five, drop of one tenth of one percent. NAS stack up five points, a gain of one tenth of one percent. I'm Charlie Paloton. That's a Bloomberg Business Flash.
You're listening to Taking Stock with Kathleen Hayes and Pim Box on Bloomberg Radio. Very special edition of Taking Stock Live from the twenties sixteen US Tennis Open, Flushing Meadow, Queen's is where we are. We're very happy to be here as we are this year. And in fact it's an historic here. And it's not historic yet because of the matches or who leaves at the end holding that big, beautiful silver cup over their head, it's because of the roof. The roof FW is t A bought so hard, worked
so hard to get built operated. Last night as Roth and Nadal played a very exciting match, he beat Andreas Seppi of Italy, but I think he seemed happy at about the fact he was the first player to win on center court with that roof closed over his head. Danny's Housner back, Chief Operating Officer of US Tennis is Association, one of the really important forces behind this happening. Danny, Welcome and congratulations. Thank you so much. Great to have
you back. Wow, so here we are. Are. Just remind our listeners you know money had to be raised. This was a really big deal and it was It was a debated for so long whether or not the U s t A, whether this this expense should be made here. Well, I could bore you with weather data from over a hundred years. That week before and after Labor Day. It's relatively dry period of time. But as you know, we had men's finals moved to Monday five years in a row.
It hadn't happened in thirty years. It was the right thing to do for the players, the fans, and all of our partners. It just took a long time to find the engineering results that would give us this spectacular roof that we have on the building. So tell us what was so hard about the engineering? What? What does this embody now in terms of engineering? Because other you know, like that, they don't doesn't the Australia has a retract where other places do as well. What is the engineering
feat here? So first and foremost, this is the first time in the United States that we're actually building our attractive the roof over an existing stadium. If it was part of the original design, it would have been done at one time. But Fleshy Meadows Corona Park, where we're housed was an ash dump in the twenties and thirties, So the land conditions here are a less than ideal.
If you put a roof on this existing structure, everything would sink into the ground, not fun for the fans or the layers, I WoT making a lot more challenge is so what about the financing in terms of what it took to get the money together to build this incredible roof. In total, we're gonna be spending in extus of six hundred million dollars on all the upgrades, and we did a couple of bond offerings and that stuff got gobbled up in a second. We're a really good
risk for a lot of people out there. And so the way we go, we're about two thirds of the way done with all the construction. What's and there's more construction, not just the roof. But I mean, I I must say I love the old Grandstand stadium. Um, I'm gonna beat have the treat though. Seeing the new one, which as i've read, haven't seen it yet, just got out
here this morning, is pretty spectacular as well. I think you're gonna come back and tell me that you think it's a pretty special place, just like the old one was. And that's what we did. We try to model it after the old one, just slightly larger but still intimate. We rebuilt the entire South campus, all new courts out there in this fall, we're gonna tear down Louis Armstrong, which has a lot of history too, and we'll build
a new Louis Armstrong that will open eighteen. It's currently ten thousand, five hundred seats and new one will be four very special place. Uh. In terms of again paying for all of this construction and all this growth, how much do you just mentioned that you had about six million dollar bond offering to help finance How much does the attendance affect that in terms of what what part of the total do you get from the people who
actually come out and pay them for their tickets? So are are big numbers that generate The bulk of our revenues is coming from ticket sales, broadcast revenue, and sponsorship sales, and they're all pretty evenly divided. Food and beverage and merchandise is an incredibly large part of the experience here, but it's not a big driver for revenue. How how is How does it look this year in terms of the crowds you're drawing and the tickets you've already sold.
The ticket sale numbers are really strong. We're looking like we're on pace too for the eighth year in a row. View over seven hundred thousand people. Now we are actually doing much like last year to less sessions than we've done historically, so we're down too session tournament and we're still driving eight hundred million dollars of economic impact for the city of New York. So it's pretty special event
for the city. People come from all over the world, all over the country, it's and so obviously tell us a bit more about that, because it's not just the people got a crop and make that claim about an event in their city, but for it's got from New York City. In the entire area. There are so many tennis fans who show up. That's why this economic data is so relevant for the city because over sixteen percent of the fans are international, over come from outside the
Tristate area. So no one's that's that seven hundred thousand people. They're not just driving from New York City, They're they're coming from all over the world. They're staying in the local hotels, they're eating in the local restaurants through out here for three, five seven a lot of them for full fourteen days of the tournament. Tell us a little bit about technology because that obviously fans uh and you want the fans to do that. You want them betweening
and self eating and all the rest of it. So what is there anything new this year, anything that you really want to let us know is happening. Absolutely, listen, we want to be leaders in that for sporting events in general. We've we've done several new deals. We have some incredible cameras inside Arthur are Stadium, so you can actually go to an app on our website, go to us and dot org. When you're inside the ball, give it your seat location and it will take a picture
or of you. You'll have a thirty second window where you can actually see what's going on and it could be in the middle of an incredibly cool point. And in general for us, it's always about what's newest and what's great and at the same time trying to do something that reflects on the history of the event. So you will find that when electronic line call was what was very important to us. We introduced it on one court. Now it's on seven courts and it's one of a team.
We will be both broadcasting from all eight teen courts and doing electron flint calls on all a teen courts. So the broadcasting on all eighteen courts. Would that be
what what channels? What network will got be carried on? Well, we're broadcasting to over two countries, so there's matches being played from players from all over the world, and those host countries want to see their players and currently now they can't always do that from all a ten courts, So this will give us an opportunity to show matches
all over the world from every court. Well, I think a lot of people don't realize to the first week there's all some one of these side court matches are the ones that people most want to see because you never know when you're gonna get the upset, and you know, for an especial second, if you're coming overseas, your your your person, you're guy or Galican B a star, all the stud your spot on. We can only play five
matches a day in arthur Our Stadium. We've got seventeen other courts, so those matches have to get distributed amongst all those courts. And what's amazing for the fans is the players are the top seeded players in the world and they could be fifty feet away from you, so really quickly HI going to top this next year Danny's Housner. Oh, we're gonna just keep going in. Obviously, when we will have rebuilt eight of the whole site, people will be
pretty surprised. And again, congratulations, really so much work, a labor of love and paying off hugely for tennis in the United States, for plushing Middle Queens, for this beautiful stadium, and for all the fans who come out. Danny's Ozener, chief of operating officer for the U s t A. I'm Kathleen Hayes. We're live with the US Open. This is Bloomberg. There are sponsors, there are fans. There's all kinds of business and money out here at the US Open.
Up next Bloomberg Sports Reporters. Two of our finess on taking stock