I ALWAYS WONDER, USTA? By Javier Palenque

A few weeks ago, I was on a trip to Dubai, and next to me sat a JP Morgan Chase banker, and an American Express VP, we were flying via Emirates and the two of the older gentlemen wore a Rolex. For trips like those I just wear sandals, a T-shirt, and blue jeans. I do not like flying, that is why I fly as comfortably as I can, and I do wear a watch, but it is a Timex Marlin from 1969, the year I was born, you get the visual. Emirates is a wonderful airline, if you ever go to the Middle East, use this airline, their coach service is great, and the first class is out of this world.

Here is a small background of the financials of these humongous companies that will give you perspective on just how irrelevant the USTA has made tennis in America, how poorly it is marketed, and how it fails to do the most basic of its purposes, which is to grow the game. The worst part is how the Ol’ boys think they are doing a fantastic job when the exact opposite is true if you care to think.

JP Morgan made $50B in profit last year, which is amazing as you can imagine. The same for American Express it made a $8B profit from its operations. Rolex's revenue Globally is $8B. Emirates has revenues of $29B per year.

Many people are not sure what one Billion is, let us make sure all do, one Billion is one thousand Million. Now that you can grasp this math, let us focus on how much is the sponsorship revenue of the USTA. You can see it here on page 19, it is a pathetic $106M and it constitutes 20% of total USTA revenues. This $106M is split between a few sponsors, the largest of which are of course JP Morgan, Amex, Rolex, and Emirates. In case you have not perceived my point of view, let me be clear, $106M is roughly $27M per sponsor, this amount is the equivalent of nothing considering their revenues or profits. For these corporations, the US Open is the equivalent of the budget for coffee and sugar for any business, that is it.

Do you now comprehend just how incapable the USTA board and the CEO are? They spend $70M in payroll per year, to care for companies that care as much about the USTA and tennis the equivalent of coffee and sugar in their workspace. This means they do not give a .....

Now that you understand the relevance of tennis, would you pay the CEO $1.4M to have clean bathrooms and fancy dinners for people who could care less about tennis? Of course you would not, that is why the USTA is a fraud and why I want them all to resign.

I want to have my email unblocked by the USTA, and the censorship to end, I accept all their resignations and I am ready to bring in my team to save tennis and grow it for what we can save so far. I always wondered why the sponsors do not care about all the horrible press the board approves and looks the other way. The CEO does not respond to my letters, nor does the board, what does that tell you? That I am unequivocally correct, that they are corrupt and that they must go. Here is a brief list of all the dreadful things they try to hide from the sponsors and marketplace. They cannot, they must all leave. Please read and follow the links below, you will finally agree with me.

Cannot wait to hear- “Welcome – Senor Presidente.”

• Reduce the number of sponsors so they can generate more cash from fewer companies.
• Offer a “premium experience” to those companies that never play the sport.
• Make sure they devalue the broadcasting value of the sport by lying about participation and attendance at the US Open.
• Sell the only money-making event they manage, the Cincinnati Open, to cover their losses for not buying pandemic insurance (unlike Wimbledon or Australian Open).
• Have a $30M marketing budget for the show, but nothing for the sport. Last ten years that's $350M misspent.
• Make the kids’ tournaments so expensive that Jack Sinner’s parents could never afford it.
• Force Jack Sinner to travel all over America to get points. He could not, so he would do something else.
• Burn yearly $23M in player development and in 20 years not one player was developed. $350M+ down the drain.
• Pay the head of Player Development and others four times what a Supreme Court justice earns and double what the president of the free world makes.
• Name the head of the ethics committee of the USTA the same person that defends the sexual harassment lawsuits that has now a petition in Congress to investigate the USTA.
• Cheats their landlord, the city of NY, for rent.
• Does not pay school taxes in Orlando claiming to be a charity.
• Censors and block critics who call the leadership out for incompetence and mismanagement.
• Has monthly articles in the NYT of abuse practices or sexual harassment lawsuits.
• This is the best one, hires a salesperson who has never played tennis in his life to lead the tennis organization in America. So how can he increase participation?
• The one thing they do OK is have clean bathrooms as that is outsourced and paid for the weeks of service as opposed to how the USTA pays their employees for 52 weeks when there are only 12 weeks of work to put the US Open up.
• Creates the narrative of a progressive inclusive not-for-profit when it is nothing more than a banana republic welfare state with wanna-be tyrants and lackeys.
• Would you pay the USTA’s CEO four times what the leader of the free world makes with this background?
• Would you allow parks real estate, where 70% of tennis is played, to go to pickleball?
• Would you not allow dissent and accountability?
• Would you conceal the truth in everything you do and hope no one knows?
• Now you can understand why the Chairman has banned my board application for next year. He opposes accountability and truth.

To end, the two gentlemen on my trip never played tennis and gave their tickets away to clients or family members. When I asked if people they know at work play the sport, they both said, no. This is the reality of the sport. Now that you understand the issues from an intelligent point of view ask yourself this, in your workplace do you care who the supplier of coffee and sugar is? do you care if they had all the bad press as above? This should make my point clear. If you were my client for a week, the text above would cost you $40K, and to think the Chairman blocks me, orders the executives not to read my articles, and pays the nonplaying salesperson, now CEO four times what the head of the free world makes. That is incompetence in full display and the board looks the other way.

Tennis needs intelligence and neither the board nor the CEO, much less the executives have any to offer the game, read my article on that topic it is brilliant.

I say NO to ineptitude and YES to growing the game.

I can be reached at [email protected]

Senor Presidente, Senor Presidente, Senor Presidente, VAMOS!

PS. Sponsors, please reach out to me and I will send you a special link with more detailed information.