08/17/98 WOMEN'S TENNIS: VOLLEY OF THE DOLLS

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WOMEN'S TENNIS: VOLLEY OF THE DOLLS
Producer Arnon Milchan goes Hollywood with the WTA Tour
In late March, Arnon Milchan, producer of such hits as Pretty Woman, L.A. Confidential, and now The Negotiator, was taking a meeting at his house in Malibu. As the Pacific lapped the beach outside, the onetime fertilizer merchant from Israel announced his support for a remake of what for the past couple of years has been a very confused show: women's tennis.
By the end of the day, Milchan, who owns a 49.5% stake in the $1.4 billion production company Regency Enterprises, had the assembled tennis execs believing that maybe he wasn't just another Hollywood smoke machine. He pledged $120 million in a nine-year deal for the worldwide TV rights to the Corel WTA Tour--a ''good script for the price,'' as he describes it. Milchan figures that by going Hollywood with the tour--and promoting the hottest-looking players--he can heighten the game's appeal and collect much more than he paid from TV outlets.
His timing may be impeccable. A gaggle of teenage superstars has burst onto the tour in the past couple of years and grabbed media attention. Sassy upstarts such as Martina Hingis, Anna Kournikova, and sisters Venus and Serena Williams have variously graced the cover of GQ, appeared on 60 Minutes, posed for Annie Leibovitz in Vogue, and made the rounds of late-night TV talk shows.
SUDDEN SHIFT. By trading on their appeal and attitude, the women have been leaving men's tennis in the dust: In four of the past six Grand Slam finals, domestic TV ratings for women outpaced men. The women were just plain more interesting. And when Kournikova, a leggy 17-year-old Russian beauty, withdrew unexpectedly from Wimbledon this summer, a headline in the British tabloid The Mirror screamed: ''Notice to all men: Wimbledon is over.''
All this is a far cry from the recent history of the women's tour. Until February, 1996, international TV rights were controlled by individual tournaments--so the tour made nothing on what was potentially the most lucrative segment of its business. The tour went without any sponsor for all of 1995. In 1996 and part of 1997, Corel--at $4 million a year--was the only source of sponsor revenue.
Internally, the tour was in shambles. It had run through three CEOs in a year, one of whom lasted only a day. Its TV contract was set to expire at the end of 1998, and it hadn't found a title sponsor to replace Corel. (It still hasn't, but new CEO Bart McGuire now thinks the tour could command $8 million a year.) What's more, a legal battle between marquee players and a pack of unknowns who had taken control of the players' association threatened the tour's very existence.
Enter Milchan (pronounced Mill-shawn). The producer had been hungry for a sports property to complement Regency's recently acquired 25% stake in the somnolent German sports brand Puma. And he was flush from two other big deals: In September, 1997, News Corp.'s 20th Century Fox Film unit bought a 20% stake in Regency Enterprises for $250 million. And in June, Regency acquired a $600 million line of credit.
Why did Milchan pick tennis? For one thing, he's a tennis fanatic. At 53, Milchan plays at least three hours every morning and can slam a 90-mph serve. But more important, ever since watching tennis bad-boy Ilie Nastase in the '70s, he has thought of the sport as great theater that could translate to the small screen. ''The people who have been running the tennis business have either been career people or amateurs--as far as understanding the entertainment side,'' says Milchan.
Milchan has wasted no time in bringing the hot lights to women's tennis. He arrived by private jet at the French Open with Arnold Schwarzenegger and at Wimbledon with Sean Connery. At the Cannes Film Festival, he chartered a 300-foot ship and invited Don Johnson and Mary Louise Parker to mingle with tennis sensations Serena Williams and Iva Majoli.
And he's also wasted no time hustling deals to cover the $13 million a year he guaranteed the Women's Tennis Assn. So far, he has signed a $3 million-a-year agreement with Eurosport, the ESPN of Europe, and is close to inking an estimated $1 million-a-year contract with another group of European broadcasters. He also has a $2 million deal with a Japanese outlet. But Milchan expects the biggest payoff to come from News Corp.'s vast empire--including Fox Sports Network, British Sky TV, and Australian Star Network. In the next few months, the tour expects to announce a sizable deal with ESPN and Fox.
LEONARDO AND BRAD. For Milchan, women's tennis is just another movie. And he likes to mull over possible scenes: On-court cameras flash the glamour girls on the screen and then cut to the audience, where Leonardo DiCaprio or Brad Pitt are taking in the action. ''If I'm paying some guy $18 million to do a part, I don't think he'll say no if I ask him to come watch some games and have some fun,'' says Milchan.
To make the show a blockbuster, Milchan--like any producer--is counting on his actors. Some people, however, have a problem with turning a player like Kournikova, a legal minor, into a tennis vamp. ''She's too young to be selling sex,'' says CBS tennis commentator Mary Carillo. ''Some of the pictures of her really make me nervous--she's barely got anything on.''
In Milchan's rush to remake women's tennis, he has little time for such concerns, though enthusiasm may occasionally cloud his thinking. He says he plans to use costume designers to outfit women players--no matter what brand of clothing they wear. And to better ''stage'' the game, he'd like to change the way it is scored. ''Am I dreaming?'' Milchan asks, laughing. Uh huh.
By Brad Wolverton

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