Capital Improvements, with Mark Ein

An interview with the Mubadala DC Open owner on marketing, doubles, Saudi offers, and more.

WASHINGTON — Since I’m still recovering from nine long weeks in Europe, I’m very grateful that the next stop on the tennis calendar is my hometown event: ATP-WTA 500 Washington.

A few days ahead of the start of the tournament, which has rebranded as Mubadala DC Open this year, I caught up with tournament owner Mark Ein for a wide-ranging interview on a host of tournament and tour topics.

Mark Ein at his tournament on Wednesday in Washington. (Photo by Ben Rothenberg for Bounces)

I’ve known Mark since his days as an owner of World TeamTennis’ Washington Kastles—one of the first tennis events at which I was ever credentialed media, many moons ago. Since he took over this ATP-WTA tournament in 2019, I’ve seen how many radical improvements he’s made to the Washington tournament—the only combined 500-level event on tour. He’s done all this while also expanding his footprint on the sports landscape, taking ownership stakes in the NFL, MLB, and Premier League.

We discuss subjects including ongoing changes to the tournament site, the appeal of lifestyle/influencer categories for ticket sales, cutting the men’s singles draw size from 48 to 32 this year, his efforts to make men’s doubles more entertaining, lessons he’s learned from ownership stakes in other sports, and having a lucrative buy-back offer on the table from the Saudis.

There’s a lot of meaty stuff here, and I hope tennis fans—and industry folks—will all feast.

To read the whole ~4,000-word interview, please subscribe to Bounces! -Ben