Cincinnati Open up-close fan experience

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Jansen Dell holds a top slot position with Cincinnati Open. He says that the Cincinnati Open is one of the nine biggest tournaments in the world.

Jansen Dell is the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the Cincinnati Open. Additionally, he manages tournament operations, leads the team at Cincinnati Tennis and spearheads strategic initiatives to support the growth and success of the historic event.

Jerry Mullins is the Senior Director of Barton Malow Builders leading the operations of the Columbus, Ohio (US) office. With 48 years of experience in the construction industry Mullins brings unmatched expertise and leadership to his role, guiding teams through complex projects with a focus on quality, safety and collaboration.

In a one-on-one interaction exclusively for Coliseum, Jansen Dell Chief Operating Officer, Cincinnati Open, US, details Jerry Mullins, Senior Director, Barton Malow Builders, US, on the $260 million makeover of the Cincinnati Open campus. The duo also agreed that tennis is a different kind of game and “the fans get a chance to see the players, be with them, hear what they are doing, see what they are thinking, and listen to what they are saying to the coaches back and forth is pretty cool.”
 

Cincinnati Open

The Cincinnati Open is an annual professional tennis event held in Cincinnati, United States. It is played on the outdoor hard courts at the 11,614-capacity Lindner Family Tennis Center in Mason, Ohio (US) and is held in the month of August. The event started on September 18^th, 1899, and is the oldest tennis tournament in the United States still played in (or near) its original City.

Jansen Dell narrated to Jerry Mullins – “The Cincinnati Open is one of the nine biggest tournaments in the world. It got four Grand Slams and then five other Masters 1000 events. So, Cincinnati is competing with Rome and Madrid and the large Cities on a global scale.”

Continued Dell, “The challenging part about tennis is it is a bracket form of competition which means on the very Day One of the tournament we are responsible for a 1,000 people or just on the player side. Ninety six Men, 96 Women plus all of their entourage – physios that they bring with them and then obviously every two days we are cutting that number to half. So, part of the challenge of the Cincinnati Open campus project was how do we design a facility that manages the amount of people we have on site. When the Beemok Capital or the owners of the sanction when they bought the facility and for that extension of the tournament was required and the goal all along was to leave the tournament in Cincinnati. It had already been there for 125 years – one of the oldest tournaments in the world. We ran into some challenges with local politics and the funding to trying to get the project to stay in the City.”

“We had about four months to design and about 30 million dollars was the project and nine months to design another 230 million dollars. The design phase of this project has been very fast and we had our 2024 tournament and five days later started construction and the construction work got over by July 2025.”

Dell further narrated to Mullins, “So, historically the Cincinnati Open would happen for one week a year and then the entire site would go dormant and nothing would happen. So, part of our commitment in spending 260 million dollars is how do we create value for the community on a year-round basis. The other tennis event that we run is doing concerts in the events. That’s the goal of this project.”

Mullin wanted to know about the fan experience and the players’ experience to which Dell stated, “The player experience at a tennis venue is very different. The players have a choice whether or not to play in our event. Obviously, those competitive advantages where the points and the way that their season shapes up just for as rankings and prize money. But, it is really up to them when they want to take breaks. Whether they want to play Canada before us and then go to the US Open or whether they want to skip our event entirely. We have been very fortunate because of how the players feel about this event specifically that almost always every top 40 players shows up. But, the main part of the focus is how do we elevate that player experience with key words like hospitality, how do we make it feel not like a sports facility but how do we make it feel like a hotel. We increased all of the player spaces and the multiple lounges. We also focused on the fan experience and the key word is intimacy. The fans can get up-close-and personal with the players in Cincinnati Open.”

Added Dell, “They love to see the players walk through the campus. It’s not like the other sports where the fans are segregated, separated from the players. You will be shoulder to shoulder with the players in the campus. We were really mindful and intentional with trying to create at a scale that felt very natural and retained that intimacy.”
 

Wrap-up

Wrapping up Jansen Dell told Jerry Mullins, “We added a new 2300-capacity stadium and we stopped at that scale because we didn’t want to put in too large a facility. We sunk it into the ground so that it wasn’t surrounded by fences. As soon as you walk in you are looking down into the Bowl or the practice courts. We have 31 total courts on site now. So, part of that is instead of just building the asphalt courts with high fences let’s just sink it into the ground so that the fans get a 360-degree view of practice and it boosts the fan experience.”

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