The Cincinnati Open's $260M tennis bet on the future of a format under fire

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3 days ago

MASON, Ohio — Ben Navarro was sitting on one of the most valuable properties in sports: A license for one of the six combined top-level events in tennis outside of the Grand Slams.
Navarro purchased the license from the USTA in 2022, attached to the Cincinnati Open, which takes place in a far different setting than the other five. Four take players and fans to Miami, Madrid, Rome and Toronto and Montreal (with the Canadian Open played across the two cities). Major cities and international destinations, all. Then there's Indian Wells, Calif., a resort community in Palm Springs, one of the backyard playgrounds for Los Angeles.
Navarro's tournament, in southern Ohio, doesn't even take place in Cincinnati, which is a city of just 300,000 people. It happens about a 30-minute drive north, in Mason, population 36,000, best known for some stomach-churning roller coasters.
Navarro, a billionaire who made his money in debt collection and credit facilities for subprime borrowers, had options. Charlotte, N.C., a growing city triple the size of Cincinnati, had a proposal. Navarro already owns the Charleston Open. Chicago, a huge tennis market and the country's third biggest city, held obvious potential.
Instead, with datelines and bright lights in his eyes, Navarro has doubled down on Mason. The top ATP and WTA players have arrived at their last big stop before the U.S. Open to a $260-million renovation and expansion of the Lindner Family Tennis Center. Navarro covered around half the cost, with local governments covering the rest.
'We looked at every option,' Bob Moran, the tournament director and an executive at Navarro's investment company, Beemok Capital, said during an interview.
'Once we put a very little investment in 2024, and then saw some dramatic difference from what it was the year before, things started to shift. OK, we can definitely do it here.'
Those top players appear to agree.
'I first came in here, I was like, 'What's going on? Where am I?'' Aryna Sabalenka, the world No. 1, said Wednesday during a pre-tournament roundtable.
'It took me a little while to like feel comfortable in the previous venue and now like we're in a completely different tournament.'
Sabalenka said players used to be on top of each other during the first days of the tournament. Now there is more space in every department. A bunch of parking lots and blacktop walkways have become a clubhouse (56,000 square feet); an outdoor pavilion (16,000 square feet); an indoor tennis center with six courts (53,000 square feet) and an operations center (20,000 square feet).
There are 13 new courts, including a new 2,300-seat sunken stadium. The site has grown from 20 to 40 acres. There are flower-lined, grassy areas throughout the campus, thanks to more than 40,000 annuals grown locally in 3.3 acres of greenhouse space. There are more than 2,000 new young trees and shrubs that should grow in the coming years and turn the place into a park with tennis courts.
Nearly all of it is available for public use, including the clubhouse, which will be a restaurant and bar when the tennis tournament isn't happening.
Maybe most importantly, the ubiquitous black asphalt that served as an underfoot oven during the steamiest days of the infernal southern Ohio summer has given way to grass and light stone.
The growth aligns with the Cincinnati Open's place in the tennis firmament outside of geography. Like the Canadian Open, this year it has grown from one week to 12 days. 56-player draws have become 96. That means more ticket sales, more sponsorship opportunities and more days of TV rights. It also means the finals in Canada overlap with the first round in Cincinnati, making playing both tournaments complicated for those top players. Sabalenka skipped the Canadian Open. So did Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz, Novak Djokovic and Jack Draper. Djokovic and Draper are out of Cincinnati too, but the others are in town.
The extended ATP and WTA 1,000 format has come in for criticism from those players and fans for its at-times glacial pace and its inflation of an already strenuous schedule. The tours say that those things are the price for the increased prize money that players also say they want; that prize money is not yet equal in Cincinnati. The women's singles champion will this year receive $752,275 (£562,700), a 43-percent increase on last year. The men's singles champion will get $1,124,380, nearly $375,000 more. The WTA has committed to equal prize money at combined events by 2027; of the six combined 1,000 events, the Italian Open, the Canadian Open and Cincinnati are yet to get there.
Amid these issues, a significant renovation can certainly help with placation. It's also a powerful statement about the staying power of the new normal, for better or for worse.
'Every tournament on our calendar brings something different, and that's a good thing,' said Simon Higson, a spokesperson for the ATP Tour. Of Cincinnati, he said that 'players enjoy it, and it fits well into the schedule ahead of New York.
'Of course, the major investments and renovation now being unlocked through its expansion will only strengthen its standing on tour as both the player and fan experience reach new levels.'
A significant tennis tournament first took place in Cincinnati in 1899, at a country club on property that is now part of Xavier University. This makes the Cincinnati Open the oldest tennis tournament to be played in its original city in the country. The U.S. Open, had some years in Newport, R.I. before making its way to New York.
1,600 volunteers turn out to work at the tournament, all displaying the enthusiasm of the small city that produced Tony Trabert, a five-time Grand Slam singles winner in the 1950s, as well as current WTA pros Peyton Stearns and Caty McNally.
At a ribbon-cutting ceremony Sunday, Navarro recalled coming to the tournament when he was likely to buy it. He'd spent some of his early years in Indiana and had a soft spot for the Midwest.
'Person after person came up to me respectfully and said, 'I hear you're going to be the new owner of the tournament.' And they tell me some generational story for how much the tournament meant to them: 'I came with my father.' 'I took my kids.' 'My mom loved this tournament.' 125 years of tradition is nothing to sneeze at, right?'
Moran, the tournament director, was a little skeptical that any of this might be possible when he first set eyes on the place in 2023 after Navarro purchased the tournament. He'd been running the Charleston Open, which Navarro also owns, for more than a decade. He arrived in Cincinnati and thought it felt dormant.
'I just kind of dove in to get to know the greater Cincinnati area the best I could,' he said in an interview Wednesday. 'What I learned is that it has an unbelievable volunteer base. Unbelievable fans who care very deeply about this event.'
He did some research on who those fans are. They drive in from all over, including Chicago, which is five hours away. Two-thirds of the ticket buyers come from outside the Cincinnati region. There was a solid corporate base that needed to be mined a little more. The East Coast had plenty of tournaments. The West Coast had Indian Wells. Cincinnati has 125 years of history.
'Why are we going to go somewhere else and try to reinvent the wheel?' Moran asked.
Moran knows Cincinnati will never be Madrid or Rome. They have to work a little harder. 'What's our advantage? The personal touches.'
They buy out the neighboring golf course during the tournaments so players can play there whenever they want. Alcaraz has found some other, fancier course, but that's how he rolls. Moran joins players for dinners ahead of the tournament. He sat with Maria Sakkari, Donna Vekić and others Tuesday night. He took Frances Tiafoe to Jeff Ruby's Steakhouse downtown after he lost the final to Jannik Sinner last year. He gets players tickets to Reds MLB games and F.C. Cincinnati matches.
'We want players to feel like, hey, this is a fun place to come and it feels like home,' he said.
Venus Williams, who has been coming to Cincinnati for a while and has been to just about every tennis tournament in every corner of the world during her 30-year career, may have given the ultimate compliment Wednesday morning.
'I think it's a great representation of what tennis should be,' she said.
(Top photo: Aaron Doster / Imagn Images)
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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