The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Tourney future in doubt
Seeking a title sponsor for survival in New Haven
The future of professional tennis in New Haven could be decided over the next two months.
Connecticut Open tournament director Anne Worcester said Tuesday that the tournament is actively seeking a title sponsor as it attempts to survive under financial duress. The tournament, an August fixture at Yale since 1998, is considering a series of options as Worcester prepares for a December WTA meeting.
Among the options is the sale of the Premier Sanction. The tournament was nearly sold by the USTA to a tournament in Winston-Salem, N.C., in 2013 before the state purchased the sanction for $618,000.
The state’s contribution to the event dropped to $218,00 this year and the tournament is expected to be self-sustaining in 2020.
But the tournament, which operates as a nonprofit, has struggled to boost revenue. The tournament staff was cut over the past week.
“The more we maximize our cash and minimize our expenses, the longer the runway is to figure out a future for tennis in New Haven,” Worcester said.
Other options include shifting the tournament to different summer dates on the WTA calendar, which could enable New Haven to draw a more attractive field of players. The tournament currently sits the week before the U.S. Open, and the August slot bodes a challenge in attracting fans at a time when vacations are popular and families are moving students to college.
The tournament could also drop to a lower-level tournament with a smaller prize purse, offering a more favor-
able operating budget.
But the clearest path to survival requires a title sponsor. The tournament was anchored by Pilot Pen from 1998 to 2010.
“The financial model doesn’t work without a title sponsor,” Worcester said. “So we’re fast and furious trying to secure a title sponsor for 2019 and beyond.”
The tournament is working with a consultant in its search for a sponsor. Worcester estimated that six to eight corporations are considering the tournament and described the companies as “some pretty big names that target women.”
But companies plan their fiscal future at differing times in the year. Some may be prepared to make such a commitment now, while others prefer to plot their sponsorship spending in the first quarter of 2019.
The tournament, though, can’t wait.
“It’s still a very fast timeline for somebody to commit,” Worcester said. “With no revenue coming in, we just can’t continue to operate.”
The Pilot Pen came to the Connecticut Tennis Center in 1998. The facility hosted a men’s event from 1991 to 1998, so New Haven became a WTA-only tournament in 1999.
With Venus Williams winning four consecutive tournaments and the Pilot Pen attracting marquee names, the stadium drew large, raucous crowds. The men returned in 2005, with Fairfield’s James Blake sparking interest as he twice won the tournament.
But the men’s sanction was sold to Winston-Salem in 2010, coinciding with the loss of Pilot Pen as a title sponsor that provided around $1.5 million. The tournament was known as the New Haven Open at Yale for three years, before the state stepped in.
Meanwhile, attendance — which exceeded 100,000 for the men’s and women’s event in 2005 — has been in the 50,000 range the past few years. The tournament attracted 50,255 this year, the third-best attended event of the 41 women’s-only tournaments on the WTA calendar. Hearst Connecticut Media was a Cornerstone Sponsor for the 2018 tournament.
Ticket sales provide about $750,000 in revenue and the tournament generated about $2.5 million from 75 sponsors this year. But what’s missing is a title sponsor to carry a large financial load.
It remains to be seen if that component will materialize.
“We’re hoping to have a lot more clarity in the next two months,” Worcester said. “We’re doing the best we can to keep tennis in New Haven. “We’ve had an amazing 21year run. It’s not easy to keep this airplane in the air.”