There are days when Craig Tiley wakes up feeling anxious. With the coronavirus pandemic bringing uncertainty to all sporting events, the Australian Open CEO just wasn't sure what new challenge he would have to face minutes after waking up. In an interview to select media houses, Tiley also spoke about the changes in prize money, contingency plans in place if there is another episode involving a positive case and why they felt it was worth it to conduct the 2021 edition at a loss to keep the music going. Excerpts:
We had a day's disruption after a positive case. Are there any contingency plans in place if there is a repeat?
The players and their entourages have been in Melbourne now for a little over three weeks. There is another two weeks of Australian Open to go. With everything that happens in these circumstances, we have contingency plans in place. After 14 days of quarantine, everyone tested negative after 15 continuous PCR tests. Unfortunately, we had one incident on Thursday when players staying at one particular hotel had to go and get retested. But they were very good and over 500 players got tested and we were back up and running. If something similar were to happen, we will have a similar action plan. But we have many action plans if a fan were to test positive. We are fortunate we are living in a place where we are free of community transmission. So the objective here is to not have the virus host with anyone. Pulling off an event under these circumstances will be a pretty remarkable achievement.
How did you overcome the challenges?
We have had many different plans leading into this event and there have been many people who believed it would not happen. Also even the Australian community, the uncertainty about coming out and watching the tennis. We have divided the 2.5 km in length site into three zones. Each fan will be allowed into a zone and we have a system of contact tracing in the event someone is positive. We are not expecting any positive cases during the course of the next two weeks. There have been doubters about this event going ahead but we are going ahead. We do expect to have between 25 and 50% of the fans we had in 2020. We had 830,000 people go through the gate. So we hope to have half of that. That's what we are allowed by the government. In the event someone tests positive, we have a very rigorous contact-tracing system and testing process.
How did you boost the confidence of the players when they were in quarantine?
When players started their quarantine, there was a big difference in the reality of the programme and the perception coming in. Some thought they could get out of the rooms and do their thing. But no, you were confined to your room. If you are not considered a close contact, you were allowed to leave for five hours a day under very strict supervision and guidelines exactly to the minute. You could practise, do some gym work and when you went back to your room you couldn't. So pretty much in the room for 19 hours in a day and if you are a close contact it was 24 hours for 14 days. I had five hours of meeting everyday with them as a group. Sometimes they were very challenging discussions. Players thought it was unfair, some were in the room, some were not. This is always about everyone's health and the proof is in the pudding, at the end of two weeks everyone has come out negative, they are playing, competing for over $86 million in prize money. Their confidence came back over a period of time and they now know that we are going to pull this off, they are going to be a part of it and potentially make history.
Was there discussions about moving the Aussie Open to the middle-east?
We never contemplated moving the Aussie Open to the middle-east. But we always felt holding the qualifying here would be tough. There is a cap on the number of people who can visit Australia now. Having the men's qualifying in Dubai and women's in Doha, we were greatly appreciative of our friends there. It was a major event, $8 mn for 128 men and 128 women. It was a really big event and one of the biggest in the middle-east. But the Australian Open will always be in Melbourne, we have the venue here. But bringing everyone to Melbourne would be the difficult task. We didn't expect any abandonment of the Open. The only thing which could potentially lead to that will be if there is a significant outbreak of the disease and the government decides to shut everything down and put everyone under lockdown. That will be the only condition but we haven't forecasted that. We expect to run a great event with lots of fans. This is going to be a unique event, in a safe environment with very reduced risk of the virus spreading.
Last year it was bushfire, this year the pandemic. How difficult it is to be the CEO?
It is a privileged role that I have. I lead a team with 650 full-time employees and about 10000 part-time employees. It is a magnificent team from all-around the world. Some of our staff are from India, and we are very proud of the work they do. It is challenging. The last break anyone had in the company was back in 2019. We were supposed to take a break after the 2020 edition, which was the most successful we ever had even though we were grappling with the bushfires and smokehaze. We didn't think we would be in a pandemic this year. It has been a lot harder. And there are so many unknowns and uncertainties and to manage through those has been difficult. But we have got a great team and we are very proud of the work we do. I never say it is easy. But nothing good comes easy. We are persistent and we believe in ourselves, optimistic about the future and we will continue to carry that attitude into the next few weeks.
Many players have suffered losses. In such a situation, should you change the prize money of the tournament?
There's been a lot of questions about the prize money. Last year, there was $71.5mn in prize money, and we kept it the same this year. Interestingly, related to your question, we are going to run this even at a debt, a multi million dollar loss. We chose to do that, we have money reserve and we are going to spend all our cash reserves. But I'm a big believer in... if we keep the momentum of the business going, we will be able to build a new platform for growth in the future and very quickly recover those funds that we lost. I made an early decision with the team to keep the prize money levels the same so that the players can be paid the same. Many of them haven't had jobs for months and months because of the pandemic. There's 128 men, 128 women and 60 wheelchair athletes and many of those haven't had jobs for many months. In tennis, you rely on two things to be successful as a tennis event. You have to have international travel and mass gathering. You are going to have neither of those during a pandemic so players have not been able to make a living. So we have done our best by offering the players the same prize money levels as 2020. Infact, the entire three weeks (Open and lead events), we are offering $86mn in prize money.
You have rejigged your prize money. Has there been any pushback from some of the players?
Good question. In the qualifying, we increased the prize money by 17%. And in the first round by 16%. So if you lose in the first round, it's a $100,000. We have significantly reduced the winners' prize money cheques, it's less than half than what it was before. But the playing group have all agreed with that. Because of the difficult year, they have all agreed with spreading of the prize money more evenly, providing the up and coming players an opportunity to earn more money. We think it's a great initiative. I have had zero pushback from the top players, they have all been very supportive of this decision.
What's been your biggest challenge?
The biggest challenge is the uncertainty that the pandemic brings day in and day out. I wake up in the morning with a little bit of anxiety about what the day's going to bring. Our new challenge is about bringing the crowds onsite. But the biggest challenge is if something happens with the virus, how do you manage it? How do you contact trace? How do you hope to pull it off? There are certain things we can't control, what we will do is control the things we can.
Are you planning to recoup your losses by hosting more events, for example?
What we did is... actually this week, we had six professional events, three men and three women. It was the first time in the history of the game that there were so many professional events in one week with the extent of prize money we had in one city. Obviously the pandemic changes things. We have a women's 250 the second week of the Open and a Women's 500 the week after the Open. That will be hosted in Adelaide.
Have you planned anything specific for people who won't be able to travel to the Open this year?
What we have this year is, we have created for many of our partners a virtual hub. It's cutting edge VR technology for your own digitally immersive experience of the Australian Open. To view matches at the Rod Laver Arena live... so you can come to Australian Open from your homes. Also, from our broadcasters, a lot are providing more behind the scenes experience.
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