Could the Mubadala Citi DC Open leave Washington?
The tennis tournament’s home, the William HG FitzGerald Tennis Center in Rock Creek Park, hasn’t been significantly renovated since its 1989 opening. According to tournament chairman Mark Ein, that’s becoming an existential problem for an annual event that has grown in size and prestige since he took over five years ago.
Earlier this week, Ein told WUSA 9 that if the “facility doesn’t match the level of the event, we’re not going to be able to keep it here.”
“We throw a lot of money at it,” Ein tells Washingtonian. “When the tournament’s not going on, this is a stadium in the middle of a public park. If I’m being honest, it hasn’t really had the maintenance it deserves.”
Among the things that need fixing? Chipped paint, cracked walls, deteriorating court surfaces, and unequal facilities for men’s and women’s players.
“It’s a massive annual investment and it would be much more efficient if some of it could be done once … whether it’s cosmetic or infrastructure,” says Ein, who owns MDE Sports and has a minority stake in the Washington Commanders.
Because the tennis center is owned and operated by the National Park Service, Ein says, there are heavy restrictions on what MDE Sports can do on its own to improve the facility and the tournament—like build out more, sell more seats, and pursue more commercial opportunities, all of which could make the event more profitable and sustainable in the future.
As a result, Ein says, he’s “working collectively” with NPS and city government to explore potential permanent upgrades. Those conversations, he says, are early-stage, and lengthy negations will need to happen to move anything forward.
Ein approached DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson a year ago about improving the facility. Investments from the city into sports typically come from the Mayor’s office, but Mendelson says that working with the council could be another approach.
“I’m supportive of our looking further at what kind of a partnership we can have,” Mendelson tells Washingtonian. “By that, I mean how the city can be helpful. Maybe that’s money, maybe that’s location, maybe that’s working something out with the Park Service. There’s a lot of potential for making more of the city open and tennis more broadly in the city, and I would like to see that pursued.”
Asked to comment, Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office referred Washingtonian to Events DC, a quasi-public agency and tournament sponsor.
In a written statement, Events DC said, “We look forward to working with our partners Mark Ein, Mubadala Citi DC Open team and Washington Tennis & Education Foundation on its continued growth.”
Nikos Bezianis, owner of Nikos Contracting, has worked on construction for the tournament for 21 years. In the month leading up to the tournament, it’s his job to spruce up the site to host corporate partners such as Mubadala and Citibank.
“Everything that you see around the stadium has to be brought and built on the premises,” Bezianis says. “The stadium is an old stadium. I work very hard and it looks very good in the end, but the city needs to do some improvements on the site. The city’s making so much money from this event that I believe that they should invest in the stadium, they should invest in the facility.”
The tournament attracts around 81,000 attendees annually. In 2022, the city calculated its total economic impact to be over $25 million.
Ein, who grew up 10 minutes away from the tennis center and once worked at the tournament as a ballboy, feels a personal connection to the event. When he bought it in 2019, it was partially to keep it from the hands of bidders who planned to move it to another city. After taking control, he focused on transforming the fan experience, bringing in popular local chefs and otherwise improving its amenities—moves, he says, that tripled the amount of temporary infrastructure that must be installed each summer.
Asked whether he’d consider moving the tournament if the city doesn’t invest more, Ein told Washingtonian that “there’s no 40-year-old stadium that doesn’t get refurbished in the world, so eventually you have to figure that out or figure something else out.”
