OMNIUM BANQUE NATIONALE

August 8, 2026

Valérie Tétrault

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Questions in English.

Q. You were pretty vocal obviously a few weeks ago following the withdrawals of Sinner and Djokovic, and I know you said at the time that you were already in discussions with the ATP about the matter. It's gotten a lot of attention in the press about them. I'm just curious if you've had any discussions with them, how they've gone. I know you said you're being visited Monday, so maybe the conversations are going to be more pronounced then, but have you had any followup from them with regards to your comments?

VALERIE TETRAULT: Well, we had a chance to welcome another member of their executive team earlier in the tournament, and we took some time to sit down and discuss a little bit the plan that is currently being worked on by the ATP ahead of 2028.

In fact, we know that this is going to be, also, an important topic during the meetings that will occur during the US Open in New York. And the ATP recommended that we write a letter to the board of the ATP, you know, to mention a little bit what we experience and how we feel about this and explain, obviously, our intention or our ask, to make sure that it is a topic that is being discussed by the board as well during those meetings.

Q. I wanted to go back to the project for the expansion of the site. I do appreciate that we're at the very beginning of the process, but I was wondering if you have an ideal timeline in mind, if the clock is ticking, because you mentioned earlier in the year that now the Montreal and the Canadian Open genre has fallen a bit behind in terms of infrastructure, not only compared to Cincinnati, but also other tournaments. And I was wondering if there is a sense of urgency with regards to how you position yourselves in the tennis community and how this kind of fits into kind of Montreal public work timeline that usually doesn't really take into account what happens in the rest of the world.

VALERIE TETRAULT: Yes. There is a sense of urgency. You said it. We really see that we're falling behind, and we're being told the same thing by the two tours.

As much as the ATP worked on implementing a lot of standards when it comes to everything that is tied to the player services, it's pretty clear that, right now, you know, this isn't a good place and they're turning more to fan experience and what is expected in terms of fan experience when you go to a Masters 1000.

In fact, you know, they did a little pilot even at our event earlier in the tournament bringing someone to kind of like walk around the site and evaluate the fan experience as well.

There's no ultimatum as of right now. It's more that they're looking to be reassured that we're working towards finding a solution.

But at the same time, I will say that, again, what we call south, not exactly south, but the south part of our stadium, the round-shaped one, obviously that part is untouched since the stadium was built in 1969. And there the clock is ticking.

And what we are trying to avoid is having to put a lot of money and make major renovations in that section of the stadium, if that is not the plan when we look with the long-term vision.

So in terms of, you know, the high-level timeline right now that we're looking at, if everything was to go well over the next couple of months and years, what we think is the earliest where the new stadium would be ready and we would be using it for the tournament would be 2032.

So already you see that obviously for major projects like this, it takes a lot of time. And so that's why when we're talking about urgency to act, that's why we need to do the work right now.

Q. Looking at the new stadium, would that be a like 12-month-a-year facility? Would it be owned or managed by Tennis Canada? What is your vision for that project?

VALERIE TETRAULT: So the plan and the scenario that seems to be the best scenario following the feasibility study that we did would be to build a three-season stadium with a retractable roof. And, of course, that retractable roof does change quite a bit in terms of what we can do with that stadium.

As of right now, you know, we have an agreement with the city, and so we have a limit of events that we can host during the year. And so I believe that this will need to be part of the discussions with the city to better understand, you know, what's their vision in terms of the usage of a venue like this one.

We believe that, yes, we could host, certainly, a few more sporting events, for example. For sure, on our side, Davis Cup ties, Billie Jean King Cup ties are quite interesting. If we had a stadium like this, for example, Canada against France, it would be in Montreal, at home in our stadium. But without the roof, when you only have a few days to play that event, it's too risky.

Q. This is a lot easier, I promise. Except for players pulling out and Felix getting injured, what was the biggest operational challenge of the first week?

VALERIE TETRAULT: The rain. The rain at the beginning of the event, first of all, because it wasn't, obviously, how we wanted to kick off the event, but also because of the volume of matches that needed to be played, and obviously it was not a little bit of rain. It was a lot of rain in two days. So that was a pretty big challenge for us.