US Open 2026: Live From Billie Jean King National Tennis Center Day Two

22:27It looks kind of fun in the pictures, but it is still an obligation. I'm sure it's part of her contract for this company to do some sort of in-person activity the week before the U.S. Open to help the brand out. And she's fulfilling that. But I do think, and I cover this with Naomi Osaka in the book I wrote about her, I do think the piling up and piling up and accumulation of more and more deals and more and more obligations and all those brands wanting their sort of pound of flesh, essentially, to give your time in exchange for this money, I do think took a toll on her ultimately and was part of the reason that she did burn out the way she did.

22:56We only have a little bit more time here left then, but I want to ask if you are going to write another book about another player, who's your shortlist of who it would be about? I don't have one in mind currently. I think the sort of the, and I imagine there's going to be a lot of books about Novak Djokovic written in the next few years. And he's fascinating. There's so many different layers to him, different angles. It wasn't like we had eight different books that all kind of covered different things from him, whether it's his success on court, what he means to Serbia and sort of Serbian nationalism, what he, you know, his role in the pandemic and sort of that sort of stand he took and how he's defined that way and his sort of odd views on what he would call science.

23:34There's, you know, honestly, there's lots of different ways to go about him in longevity in the sport, you know, disrupting the big three, different, you know, geopolitical things he's been involved in again with with East and Europe versus West and such. and he's a fascinating character. And so he'd be very cool to cover. It would be, if I was going to imagine it though, I imagine it being like a 1 ,200 page book. And I don't know if anyone would be able to lift it, much less read it. Well, we'll give you time to write it. No need now. I mean, look, it's the best of five sets. Exactly, exactly.

24:00It's going to be a big one. Hey, Ben, really good to get some time with you. Appreciate it. Thank you for having me. That's the tennis writer and reporter, Ben Rothenberg. Check out his sub stack. Cannot say enough about it. It's called Bounces. He started it a couple of years ago. So he's covered pro tennis for The New York Times, for The Slate, for BBC, CNN, and he hosts the No Challenges Remaining podcast. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app.

24:30Or watch us live on YouTube. Now, Molly, you think about the partners that the U.S. Open has had, and there's none probably that are as iconic and longstanding as IBM. The company has been working with the nonprofit for more than 30 years on technicals, on analytics, on technology. We've got a couple of great voices from IBM to talk a little bit about that partnership and what they're doing. We've got Tyler Seidel, a technical director for IBM, with us here at the U.S. Open. And Cameron Stanhouse, Global VP of Sports and Entertainment. Both of them join us on site here at the U.S. Open. Welcome, welcome.

25:07Thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having us. Nice sunny day. We haven't seen many of these. We haven't, but this one is extra sunny. It is. And like I was saying earlier, I mean, it could be worse. We could be out on the court for like three or four sets and have no shade. But yeah, we're happy to be here, especially when it is not raining. Cameron, I want to start with you because you handle sports and entertainment at IBM and the partnerships there. I'm just wondering where on the spectrum of what you do, the U.S. Open falls. Yeah, I mean, we, as you mentioned, we've been at the U.S. Open for 34 years.

25:37Our longest standing partnership is Wimbledon. We signed with them in 1990. But the really interesting thing about US Open Wimbledon and the Masters through 30 plus years is that we've been with them on this digital transformation journey since the very beginning. We built their first website. We introduced their first jobs in around 2009. We started infusing AI insights in 2017. And so we've been with them through every single step of how they want to transform. And one of the things I love about the US Open is that they have a continual push for innovation and they're not afraid to try new things.

26:08And so, I mean, you can see that this year, right, we're all living through the construction of the new Arthur Ashe Stadium, which is amazing. But they're not free to try new things. And so we've introduced some new features this year that are first of its kind, something called Serve Quality, which we're really excited about. But it's one of our marquee partnerships. It's also in our backyard. IBM's global headquarters are in New York. And so we're really excited to celebrate this moment in New York City with the US Open. There are a few other features, too, that are unique to this year. A bit more going on with the app, right, Tyler?

26:36Yeah, so as Cameron said, we're super excited about server quality. There's a lot of features that you can get on the app besides that, such as the draws, the scores, the stats, the statistics. So a lot of our team has actually been here for about two or three weeks already just doing setup. There's so much activity that's going on. This has been a three-week tournament pretty much. But what you could get out there, which we're excited about is server quality. It's a new stat in tennis. It hasn't been done before. And we've gained access to the limb tracking data that's coming off the cameras.

27:02They've captured the XYZ coordinates of the ball, but now it's actually capturing now 21 joints that we're analyzing we're analyzing that 50 frames per second it accumulates about 1.2 billion different data points to come up with a serve quality score for each and every player so you can actually get that within the new feature called live updates which is your own personalized home page where there's a lot of activity that's going on around the grounds so live updates is telling the fan more personalized to you what you may want to see what's the most exciting matches with those insights and perspective that you may not get otherwise.

27:33What's the camera, Tyler, that it's following? Is it the same one that does the Hawkeye? Is it different? Okay. Yeah, so we're taking all that data and then we're applying our AI on top of it to come up with that sort of quality score. And is this also going to then somehow factor into the also like the IBM probability and insights to win as well? Yeah, so right now they're separate, but I think it'll be a big factor coming forward. We've been doing live likelihood to win for the last couple of years and the pre-match projection for a while, taking both the structured data so that everybody has the head-to-head of who's been playing the best, who has the best records throughout the tournament, but looking at that unstructured data, so who has a new coach, who has a lingering injury, what are the broadcasters and commentators saying, taking all that into consideration for a pre-match projection, and it's really fun to watch the AI update live throughout the course of the match.

28:19So that is not included right now, but it will be something as a consideration moving forward. Yeah, and we're constantly looking at ways to follow our features, because one of the main goals at USC is to engage with fans. This is really their biggest showcase of the year, right, for the USDA. So as Cameron said, you know, we started with the pre-match likelihood to win. Then we went to live likelihood to win, updating after every single point. And now this year, we've introduced key moments, which is that, hey, explainability. What are those turning points? What are the deciding factors of a match to explain that to the user?

28:47Why the momentum is shifting the way it's shifting? I want to talk more about this likelihood to win because, you know, there's just so much about protection markets right now. And everyone wants to know the odds, whether it's before the match, during the match, how these things are changing in real time. We talked about the U.S. Open's new partnership with Kalshi. We see you guys have the likelihood to win. We've seen that WTA has been a partner with FanDuel for a number of years now. Talk about these odds here, where you guys fit in, and do you get the sense that people are using these kinds of insights here to also make their own predictions?

29:19We like to stay agnostic. For us, we provide a great feature that helps fans engage with the match and helps broadcasters have some fun commentary, and then however you people use those insights is up to them. That's right. Yeah, the folks in the ESPN booth do refer to those quite a bit there. It's a healthy discussion and argument point, and we have a great highlight reel when they love to disagree with the AI, and then it proves them wrong. It's our favorite thing to do every morning. Yeah, we've had a really good accuracy rate, especially within the finals, and we go against the grain. Obviously, the two finalists deserve to be there.

29:55You know, you've gone through the whole draw, but there's been some times when we've gone against the favorable pick and we've been right. Yeah, even with the Djokovic match, I think it was what, after the first set, it had the tides turning and it actually predicted Djokovic to lose. And everybody was arguing with it on TV and it ended up being right. So there's a lot that goes into it and it's a really fun, again, all of this is to keep people engaged with the match in more ways. You know, we talk about all of the people that are walking through these doors and these gates, right? million people coming to the U.S.

30:25Open, but 14 million people are at home and online engaging with our platforms. And so this is just ways that we can keep them in touch and fodder for discussion. So Tyler, how much smarter does that prediction tool get each year? Yeah, we're constantly looking at it. We have retrospectives. We look at how it performed. It's getting smarter each year because not only does it take into the hard data, so all the stats and statistics about coming into the U.S. Open, such as previous tournaments, such as its value Open and how they're performing in this tournament, it's also accounting for trusted sources and millions of articles and blogs and media.

30:56So it's picking that up, natural language. So if there's something that we're not getting in the hard data, the hard stats, we're picking that up through the natural language of these articles. So we're speaking with Tyler Seidel, Technical Director at IBM, and Cameron Stanhouse, Global VP of Sports and Entertainment at IBM. We're here on site at the U.S. Open. Cameron, when we think about these partnerships, it's been 34 years that IBM and the USDA and when the U S open have been together, the return on investment and just tracking for you from the perspective of, okay, I have a limited amount of money I get to spend every year and deploy, and we can choose different events to, to, to do it at.

31:31How do you measure the return on investment from the money that you spend here? Yeah. It's a combination of looking at, you know, brand statistics as well as how we're able to entertain clients on site. I think, uh, the reason why we pick sports partnerships is everybody knows who IBM is. Many people do not know what we do. If you used a credit card today, you used IBM technology. Nobody knows that. But the sports partnerships we have are breathing case studies of what's possible when you work with IBM consultants and IBM technology and allow you to touch and feel it in a way that makes sense.

32:02So for us, we look for opportunities to demonstrate our capabilities, and there's no better place to do that in tennis, which is why we've been in the tennis tournaments for so long with Wimbledon, the U.S. Open. and like I said, this being our home court advantage, we're putting tons of our clients and tons of our employees through here to be able to showcase what we do every day. We were talking before with another guest about all of the parties that happen in and around the U.S. Open. I think you guys have one next week. Is that right? In Madison Square Park? Yes. Yes, I see. Parties are a little different for us.

32:33Tyler being on the technology team is here early, early and late, late. But, yeah, we want to celebrate this moment with the rest of the New Yorkers And again, our apps are about bringing people closer to the game, even if they can't be here. So we will be hosting a pop-up at Madison Square Park. We did it last year. But we'll have different AI fun games and tools. Bring your friends, family, any fans, and come hang with us in the park and watch the matches. We'll be live streaming them. So just a great way to stay engaged. So it's me, you, and Watson. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Great. Yeah. Amazing.

33:02Me and my closest friends. Hey, Tyler, I know you can't talk about next year yet at this point. but as you kind of think about what you've seen over this last week, over the last two weeks, and what you'll see from IBM over the next week, how are you already thinking about the way you're going to change things for next year? Yeah, I mean, we're already thinking about 2027 and perhaps 2028. I've had conversations with my counterpart, the USA, Brian Ryerson, who's the head of digital strategy. And we're constantly just having conversations of, you know, how are things working as this tournament's going on?

33:28What would be cool if we were going to roll this out next year? You know, we'll take a week off or so, I want to say, at the U.S. Open, and then we'll regroup, do that full retrospective, start doing some planning for next year. But, you know, I don't want to jump too far ahead of the horse. But I want to say, you know, this is the first year that we're doing cerebral palsy. So it would be really interesting once we start having multiple years on the road belt, is there any correlations that we can make based on the data that we're seeing? All right, well, we're looking forward to keeping an eye on that.

33:55A big thank you to both of you for joining us here on Bloomberg Business Week Daily at the U.S. Open. That's Tyler Seidel, Technical Director for IBM. Also, Cameron Stanhouse, Global Vice President of Sports and Entertainment. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Businessweek Daily coming up after this.

34:13Some people treat ChatGPT like some kind of smart search engine, and some use it to get work done. ChatGPT Work is a new way of working in ChatGPT that can take action across your apps and files, stay with a project for hours if needed, and turn a goal into finished work. It's designed to help you move from a chaotic starting point to a reviewable first version. So all the source materials, briefs, and scattered information that you have to grind through to turn into something useful can just become something useful. Put ChachiPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at ChachiPT.com by selecting Work Mode, available on Plus and Pro plans.

34:55Aging doesn't stop, and neither should you. with Vital Proteins Collagen and Protein Shakes. Because around the age of 30, your body needs more support for movement and recovery. On workout and rest days, reach for a 30-gram total protein shake or go with our classic collagen peptides. Help support healthy hair, skin, nails, bones, and joints so you can stay vital, stay you. Visit vitalproteins.com to learn more and where to buy. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. You already know how AI is changing how everyday work gets done, how much ground you can cover, and how fast a team can scale.

35:33To stay ahead, you need the tools that give you a competitive advantage, built for this new era. Welcome to Agentic Revenue. Adio is the CRM for this world. It meets you where you work, compounds every customer signal into context, then axon it across your pipeline to let you move in on match speed and scale. With agents and automations for every job in revenue, Adio orchestrates your work around the clock. Built to handle the scale of your workloads, extensible with API and MCP, and with the infrastructure to keep up with your most ambitious agents. Loved by high-growth startups like Granola, Modal, and Etched, Adio runs the work behind every win.

36:08That's Adio, the agentic CRM, the intelligent system that never sleeps. Picks up leads at 2 a.m., catches renewals before they slip, hands you the answer before you ask. Try Adio free at adio.com slash iHeart. That's adio.com slash iHeart.

36:28you're listening to the bloomberg business week daily podcast catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five eastern listen on apple carplay and android auto with the bloomberg business app or watch us live on youtube it's about tennis here at the u.s open but it's not just about tennis anyone who has been here understands that the tennis gets almost as much attention as the food and drink and the man who makes that happen is Chris Studley. He is back with us. He's Managing Director of Event Services for the USTA. He joins us here at the US Open. Chris, you did not bring any chicken nuggets.

37:04I'm so sorry. Or caviar nuggets. Or Heineken's, but we got those earlier. We did get those earlier. They're delicious, aren't they? They're pretty good. Can you just give us, we talked to the folks at Bacardi yesterday, just some staggering numbers of expecting close to 800 ,000 honey deuces sold this year. What are the other numbers that you can tell us about what goes into the food and drink at an event like this? You know, everything's up this year. The fans are up everything. We did over 300 ,000 people during Fan Week, so you're seeing more sales across the board just naturally. But the Honeydeuce number is always like the tracker, right?

37:37So that 800 ,000 number, it would be a jump from the 738 we did last year. Fans love it. Across the board, the Salt Tank experience, I think everybody's seen that. Mine was too long for us today. We were hoping you were going to bring us one. We could probably make that happen a little later. We'll get one dropped off. I will tell you that. We will have to pay for it, guys. Just so you know, we pay for everything. Absolutely. Absolutely. But no, they usually do about 300 sandwiches in the city a day, and they're doing over 1 ,500 a day. They do 300 sandwiches a day in the city. And then they close.

38:08Oh, my God. I think I saw it from the founder who's been out here. He was saying, what is it, like 1 ,500 pounds of beef they go through every day or something crazy? Yes. I mean, we've talked a lot about influencers on this show, and yes, a lot of them are out there with the ring lights. showing you the outfits, what to wear to the U.S. Open. There's a lot of food influencers, too. There are. There are. And to touch on the influencer thing for a second, we have a code of conduct, and we've educated our staff to try to make that all stop. With the ring lights, you're saying. Exactly. There's a whole new element of fan that's out, too, that's helped grow in the game of tennis, and we want to make sure people are enjoying it properly in the way it's meant to be.

38:46So never want to impact the fan experience whatsoever. But there is the food influencer that's out. And, I mean, it's a culinary experience when you're here watching tennis. So we do enjoy it. How do you guys choose the restaurants that are here and that are allowed to be here? Yeah. So we work with our partners, Levy Restaurants, who run a number of major arenas, stadiums across the country. And they're best in class in everything they do. And we look for what is the latest in food, right? I mean, in your own personal lives, you probably experience different foods. And sometimes you're into things, sometimes you're not.

39:18And we'll look at what's hot at the moment and also what fans are craving. Like, when you come to the U.S. Open, you're spending more time here than you would at any other sporting event, right? You go to a baseball game, they've actually sped it up, and it used to be one of the longer length of stays. Hockey, football, you know. Well, let me, hold on. I just want to pause there because not everybody listening or watching right now has had the experience of being here. But just to give some context, you could get an 11 o 'clock entry here during this week, and you could likely be here until 10 p.m.

39:45watching tennis with that one ticket, even if you don't have a night pass. You could even come at 9.30 in the morning this week. You know, we don't switch our gates until 11 until next Thursday. So you're going to spend multiple meal periods here. So we want to have the best offering in all of sports and enable you to try one thing. Let's say you go to Miznan, which is new with us this year at Court 7, and you want to try their special green beans. And I am not a healthy eater, but they're amazing, so I do recommend them. And then you go to Salt Tank later on for dinner. I mean, you can have those great experiences across.

40:13You've talked about the time spent here. We're going to talk about the money spent, too, because this is a very premium offering, as you've said. Talk about the pricing decisions that go into for the food, the drink. You know, we had the Bacardi execs on here the other day talking about the honey juice. They said they don't price the honey juice. Is that something that you and your team do? Yeah, the USTA works alongside Levy restaurants. There's a number of factors that go into it between labor, product costs, all the above. I can tell you that any funds raised, obviously, with USTA, it goes back into growing the game of tennis.

40:42So at the end of the day, it's doing good, right? But we're very conscious. We look at every other venue in this tri-state area to make sure our prices are in line with others. You're not seeing things that are way out of whack. And by the way, when it is a little higher, it's better quality usually when you really dig deep into it. And also the logistics of getting the food out here from a kitchen, from a restaurant, and doing it out here. There are costs associated with that. We'll take Salt Hank, for example,$39 for the sandwich that everybody's talking about. The line was huge for that. Is there any sort of breakdown that you could give us about, okay, how much of that goes to Salt Hank?

41:16how much of that goes to the USTA, that sort of thing? There's definitely shares there. I can't get into the specifics, but yeah, I mean, it's all pretty proprietary. Okay. But yeah. Is that the right way to think about it? Like, okay, there are a lot of different stakeholders here. So there's the USTA part of it that does the infrastructure that puts on the event. There's the actual food costs associated with it, getting the food out here, and the labor costs associated with it. Am I thinking about the stakeholders right? Yeah, I think so. Okay. And then the USTA operating it and providing the facility to do so.

41:45Yeah, those are the keys. Talk to us a little bit more about who gets to be in these stands here as the food and drink vendors. Are they almost like, you know, there are some that are here every year. Are there others that are almost like auditioning, like a rotating cast of like who's going to get that next spot? We get inquiries all year long. I mean, we'll get them now saying, can I come next year? And a lot of it is what are our fans responding to? We'll look at all the data afterwards. I mean, we see how many sandwiches they'll sell at the end. We'll look at that, right? It also goes into who can operate, you know, at this level.

42:16because when you talk about like Salt Tank, for instance, 300 sandwiches in the city closes down, we're doing 1 ,500 a day. Can you scale up? And the team at Levy does a phenomenal job of getting in that stand with them and making sure we can turn food out that's still high quality. You know, something I've always even wondered, too, is like the guys who are out here selling ice cream, and it's like it is a hot day. Like, I mean, that's up to them, of course, to get the freezers, make sure this is all cool, but like there's a lot of logistics involved in this. A lot of logistics, and, you know, ice cream is a great one.

42:44And as an example, we worked with Van Leeuwen to develop our own custom flavor. I know. My son loves it. It's amazing. It's my personal favorite, and I wasn't the only voter on it. Can you get it outside of the U.S. Open or no? You can't. You can't even buy it? Just here. Interesting. I wonder if it will be so successful they will decide to. We have to talk about it for sure. Because that's something you guys have to figure out. Yeah, I want to talk a little. So I came during Fan Week with my son. We were here on Arthur Ashe Kids Day. It was a great experience. It was incredibly crowded, as it shows the demand for this.

43:14Some of the lines for food were really long. How do you manage that? And sort of like what's the math that you do to try to figure out, okay, we don't want people spending too much time in lines and missing too much caddis. Absolutely. Fan week in particular and kids day this year, now was the first day that we were actually really open after our concert the Friday before. So a lot of stands were just getting going, not an excuse by any stretch. We always want the first experience somebody has the first day to be just as good as final Sunday, right? So we work with Levy to try to figure out operationally, how many bodies do you need making drinks?

43:46How many bodies do you need serving that burger? You know, that type of thing. I think the popularity of the Savannah Bananas brought more people out here. That's interesting. Yeah, we didn't get to see the Savannah Bananas because they were so popular. The line to meet them was like an hour long. Yeah. Which is fine. We weren't here to see the Savannah Bananas, but we were able to get some ice cream. But there was also like, would you say that you, for next year, you learned a lot from that day? because it was a different day this year and it was so popular? Absolutely. I mean, you know, Savannah Bananas in particular, selling out stadiums across the country, right?

44:17And I'm talking baseball stadiums, football stadiums. We brought them here to Arthur Ashe, and obviously it doesn't hold as many people, and they came out in droves to see them. So weather plays a big role. You never know. I mean, year over year, you've got to look at every single aspect of it. Totally. Thank you so much for joining us, Chris Studley. He's Managing Director of Event Services for the USTA here at the U.S. Open. One last thing before you go, Chris. What are you having for dinner tonight? Oh, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I like to wander the food village and kind of pick. But there are sit-down restaurants, too, here.

44:45Absolutely. People forget about. And we even mentioned we have a brand new one this year with Cosme. You know, I highly recommend it. We got to talk about it next year. Absolutely. You'll come out to join us? For sure. Okay. And you'll tell us what you have for dinner? Will do. Perfect. You know, the one thing, Tim, that I want to get that I haven't gotten yet this year is that, you know, we don't have to talk a lot about these$100 chicken nuggets with the caviar. You don't have to get the caviar. You can just get the nuggets. That's right. Maybe the cost comes down a bit on that. But something else that they have there is this chocolate chip cookie, this brown butter cookie that I went to try to get the other night.

45:16They were sold out. Okay. Well, maybe tonight you can get one. Maybe. You got to go early. All right. Talk to Chris. He's managing director of event services for the USTA. Joining us on site here at the USF. And Chris Dudley, thank you again. Good to see you. This is the Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Podcast. Available on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern on Bloomberg.com, the iHeartRadio app, TuneIn, and the Bloomberg Business app. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg Terminal.

45:59This is Jacob Goldstein from What's Your Problem? Running a business is hard enough. Don't make it harder with a dozen apps that don't talk to each other. One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. That's software overload. Odoo is the all-in-one platform that replaces them all. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR. Fully integrated, easy to use, and built to grow with your business. Thousands have already made the switch. Why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's Odoo.com.

47:03and drug administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. You already know how AI is changing how everyday work gets done, how much ground you can cover, and how fast a team can scale. To stay ahead, you need the tools that give you a competitive advantage built for this new era. Welcome to Agentic Revenue. Adio is the CRM for this world. It meets you where you work, compounds every customer signal into context, then acts on it across your pipeline to let you move in on match speed and scale. With agents and automations for For every job in revenue, Adio orchestrates your work around the clock.

47:35Built to handle the scale of your workloads, extensible with API and MCP, and with the infrastructure to keep up with your most ambitious agents. Loved by high-growth startups like Granola, Modal, and Etched, Adio runs the work behind every win. That's Adio, the agentic CRM, the intelligent system that never sleeps. Picks up leads at 2 a.m., catches renewals before they slip, hands you the answer before you ask. Try Adio free at adio.com slash iHeart. That's adio.com slash iHeart.