ROLEX MONTE-CARLO MASTERS

April 12, 2026

David Massey

Press Conference

DAVID MASSEY: Again, thank you for all the coverage you do. Such an important part of this event is how you cover it and spread the words, whether it be by photo, by written press, or indeed radio, television. It's such an important part of this. So thank you again for all that you do there.

I hope you had a good week here. Obviously in a new facility, which was a big change for all of us. I hope that you found everything that you needed in sort of the second and third floor of this building, and that you were in a good location that served your needs.

I know that the old press center, where you had at least half of the room facing that wonderful view, is no longer the same, but you've now all got the sea view, so I hope that is a good thing. But we are here to try and listen to your needs, as well.

If I can touch a few words on this year's edition, it was the first time in our history of the tournament that we had sold out all tickets, including for the first Saturday of the tournament, in advance. So normally we have tickets available people can buy online right up until the first Saturday. This year, it wasn't the case. We were actually sold out fully in advance.

We had tickets, as we do even today, at the entrances. So we have around 120 tickets that we sell at the entrances, and so that remained the case. But for the first time in the history of our tournament, we were sold out, including the first day of qualifying, which is a real delight for this event.

I sat here last year thinking that we wouldn't break the record of attendance, but we are sort of online right now to surpass the 154,000 spectators that we had last year. We have sold, in any case, around 155,000 seats to the tournament over the nine days.

You know, we can't control the weather, can't control the results, but we have been blessed with dry weather, which has been really fantastic for an outdoor event, and we look at the results on court and having a spectacular week of tennis, thinking about the semifinals yesterday with the No. 1, No. 2, No. 3 in the world, and then Valentin Vacherot, the local hero, repeating his great form that we saw him win the title at the Rolex Shanghai Masters. So a real dream for this tournament to have such a lineup.

And then today, with the No. 1, No. 2 player in the world, and whoever wins today will take away the No. 1 title with them tomorrow morning. So it's great to have so much on the table for these two players that bring so much to the sport. I believe it's their 17th time that they will be meeting. I know how those matches are so close. Some of them not as close as others, but we look back at Roland Garros last year, an incredible, incredible match where no one knew who would come out with the title until literally the last point.

So today, we obviously look forward to a great final, hoping that they remain competitive and in great form. We've got a wind alert so that we're going to expect some strong wind this afternoon, but that might just make it more interesting. Otherwise, it should be dry.

Really, when we have a record in spectators, it also translates into a record in every other area. Whether that be record hospitality, record merchandising, every sector of our tournament will reach its height, I would say.

But I do think this is the last time I could say this, because we can't really do better than this in terms of records. Our goal is to receive the spectators in the best possible way, and so we have done a few things this year that have been looking at how we can receive the spectators.

And so our new initiative, which was reimagining the Animation Zone and making it into a nice area for families to come, we have deemed it a big success. We're selling right now ground passes, which is really lovely, so the screen with the chaises longues, and just having that area full with the whole nine days is really pleasing to see, as well as in the commercial village with the four screens, creating more of a hub there for spectators there, as well. So we have really been happy with the small changes we have been doing.

For the players, obviously it's such an important area for us, looking after their needs, so the second year of the Player Village, and continues to be a really important element for us. We added the gym down there too, so we had a first-class gym for them. It was really important for us to again meet the needs of the players, and that's been a great thing to see.

Yeah, again, we are just overall delighted with this event. Couldn't have asked for more.

So I now hand it over, if you've got any questions for me, I'd be happy to answer them.

(Applause.)

DAVID MASSEY: Thank you.

Q. First of all, thanks. Congratulations for the way the pressroom has been restored. Of course we miss a little bit the floor, the up floor over there, but you cannot have everything. It's more comfortable, let's say, in order to cover the press conferences instead of running up and down through the stairs.

I would suggest that through the stairs you're able to put a cord, something that when you go up or when you come down, you don't have to crash against everybody else. I mean, it would be easy. You come down on the right, you go up on the left, and yesterday I saw some people almost falling, hitting someone else. So it could be dangerous. That is something quite easy to do. It is a suggestion.

I would say also that we, as journalists, we were used in the past years, we were probably more important, the written press everywhere, not only here, so we were invited to the dinner, other things.

In some places, we still have a chance to buy the tickets until February or March. There is a list that you can apply and then you see. I think that this could be easily done, because you're going to sell the tickets anyway. So if, let's say, even 10 days before the tournament, you have 30 tickets to serve for the journalists who are here writing every day, they cannot know if some of their families will come or not, in case they don't buy it, in the last 10 days, there is no problems for you to sell them.

Because yesterday, I came at 7:45 to try to get the tickets for yesterday morning, and there were 150 people queuing outside, and the place where they were selling the tickets was opening at 9:00. I came at 7:45. And there was a long queuing.

So the problem to not be able to sell all the tickets doesn't exist. You could put them back. But you will give at least to a journalist a chance to maybe sometimes once every few years to bring the family or wife or whatever. I think could be easily done, if I can suggest that.

Apart from that, I think everything was fine. There is one more thing. Where you do the interview in the mixed zone, there is a door that opens up and closes all the time with a lot of noise. The players who come out of that area don't know that there is a mixed zone. It's impossible to tape, is impossible to do a good job. So that is something else in my opinion could be changed. My suggestion.

DAVID MASSEY: Thank you for the feedback. We take very much note of your opportunities for improvement, so we will be looking into that and try and improve.

Doing reverse order, the mixed zone, I think we can move it further in rather than having it right by the door.

I believe, looking at sort of the ticketing access for media in advance of the tournament, we could also look into that so we can give you the opportunity to buy tickets.

Then lastly, in terms of the flow around the club, it's true that when we are at capacity and that there are matches that finish at the same time, it does get very crowded. We know that. We're not looking to add more capacity on-site. We're looking at just improving that experience.

So absolutely looking at how we can make the flow better. So it's a great suggestion you have with the staircases.

Q. Sorry. I forgot one more thing. I'm trying to help, not that I want to criticize.

When there is a press conference, you have to ask the player before the day starts. Sometimes it's not correct, because you don't know if something will happen during the match. So the journalists would need, someone loses 6-Love, 6-Love, to be able to talk to the player. If you have to decide at 9:00 in the morning, you cannot know it. That is not proper, in my opinion. That happens also somewhere else, so it's not only Monte-Carlo.

Second thing, when they call you for the mixed zone, you don't apply before for having the press conference, so you should be able to ask any player. Instead, sometimes you go down, and they tell you, No, you didn't ask for that player to answer.

Mixed zone? Everyone can ask. So that's something else that should be talked to the ATP, and so on. I just want... Thanks a lot. Sorry about that.

DAVID MASSEY: No, no, no. I think in terms of access to players, that's very much in the hands of the ATP Tour. We will help with infrastructure, but in terms of access to players, I think I will redirect your question to the ATP. But completely understand you want to do your job and have access and be able to speak to them.

But I do believe you are talking about matters that are probably applying to the ATP Tour across many tournaments and not particularly to here. But we're open to how we can help, is the answer. Thank you for your feedback, though.

Q. Congratulations for the tournament. Very wonderful. Just a question. Sometimes there was too much crowd along the side, much people was not possible to walk. Do you think, do you envisage to introduce a night session like other tournaments, or the program will remain like this?

DAVID MASSEY: We have no plans to have a night session. We looked into it, but the reality is that we believe there is two things. One is the weather. We believe that night sessions, it often gets quite cold. It's still early spring. And secondly, from an infrastructure point of view, having over 10,000 people in the day session and 10,000 people in the evening session, if it's for center court, will they overlap, will be problematic for everybody in terms of access to the Principality, in terms of parkings, and then on-site we wouldn't be able to have everybody crossing each other.

We haven't looked into pursuing that any farther. So we are a day event with four matches, usually four matches per day up until the final.

It's definitely, I believe we're the only Masters 1000 that doesn't have two sessions. I believe that's the case. So it is certainly interesting from a business point of view, but the practicality of it for us is not obvious.

Q. I think the new press box is not well located. Very far. And the view is not correct for us if you want to be in the match to analyze it correctly. So do you think there are some things that can be done for next year?

DAVID MASSEY: Would you want to be back to the same location?

Q. Not the same, but another, not this one, not the one of this year, is not correctly located, I guess. The press box.

DAVID MASSEY: Press box.

Q. Not here.

DAVID MASSEY: So the press section on court?

Q. On court, yes. Do you think there could be a change, or...

DAVID MASSEY: We could look into that, for sure. What we were looking to do is again facilitate your access, so you'd leave over here and you'd be immediately within the press. And it was a bigger stand, as well. I'm not sure if you noticed that. But we added I think around about 30 seats extra compared to before.

Again, the feedback was many of you were staying, looking at the court from the top level. And now that you want to have access -- we want to make sure you had access to the court from the press tribune.

But we will analyze that and see where we can place it, where it's close to here but at the same time with a better view of the court. So maybe we should discuss that with Isabelle and then see how we can help look at that.

Q. I'd like to confirm what Ubaldo said about the indoors mixed zone.

DAVID MASSEY: Yes.

Q. The Zverev interview was horrible because people were banging the door, coming out, screaming, and I noticed there was a Sky Deutschland there, so it was really for everybody, he was smiling, but it could have been worse.

I mean, it annoys the player to have all of this banging because he's not really in the best mood.

DAVID MASSEY: Yeah.

Q. The other thing I wanted to ask, compared to all the other 1000s, is about the meals. It's very, very nice to be able to go and eat, but it takes a lot of time and it's only from 12:00 to 3:00. Usually I'm finished, 4:00 to 5:00 I might have time, and in other tournaments they just give us on our accreditation, every day we get, I don't know, 40 Euros, or I think Miami was $40, Cincy, all of them have it.

So if you want to just grab a sandwich and there is great little things to eat around here, so we could have then an opportunity to just give the card, because it's really hard to be able to time it perfectly and go and sit when you're always looking at your watch, looking at the screen, because you don't know what's going to happen.

DAVID MASSEY: So when we moved the press center to here, we looked at whether we should also move the press restaurant. We concluded that it was still best to keep it where it was because of the quality and the area to sit down. As you can know, every square meter of this tournament is occupied.

So we felt that it was a best solution to keep it there. If the feedback is that you'd rather it not be there anymore because it's too far away...

Q. No, it's not too far away. It's not at the right time. It's open, am I right, it's open 12:00 to 3:00? So, I mean, it's just the timing. We're usually working at that time. I know I can start thinking about food at 4:00, quick sandwich. If we can have it on our cards just to go and...

DAVID MASSEY: One thing we can look at offering is sandwiches in the press bar, for instance. I think it might be the solution. Because over here, it's a lunch, essentially lunchtime, so it would run until 3:00 I think is considered lunch. Maybe afterwards would be more considered a late-late lunch, and of course you're working. We can try and add sandwiches to the press bar over here.

Q. Can we ask about the level upstairs where we were before? It's now all blocked. A VIP, a lounge?

DAVID MASSEY: It's still under evaluation of how that space will be utilized. It's been completely renovated and it's not finished yet. But it's part of the year-round clubhouse that has been fully renovated. So the intention of that will be destined for some form of hospitality, but we don't know yet exactly what.