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Credit One finds timing right to sponsor first tennis event

Sloane Stephens will be one of six top-50 players at Charleston’s WTA exhibition.getty images

Credit One Bank is sponsoring a tennis event for the first time in the middle of a pandemic.

 

The women’s pro tennis exhibition, the Credit One Bank Invitational, will be played without fans in Charleston, S.C., June 23-28, with a 16-player field featuring the past two Grand Slam winners, Australian Open champion Sofia Kenin and U.S. Open winner Bianca Andreescu, and six overall players ranked in the WTA’s top 50 including Americans Sloane Stephens and Madison Keys. The Volvo Car Open, the annual tour stop for Charleston Tennis LLC, was canceled in early April because of COVID-19.

Credit One has long been an active sports sponsor, backing the Las Vegas Raiders, Vegas Golden Knights and Big 12 Conference. The Las Vegas-based bank’s biggest sports investment is in NASCAR, where it provides the official credit card and sponsors the Chip Ganassi Racing No. 42 car. 

NASCAR’s first race back from a two-month hiatus in May drew more than 6 million viewers, numbers akin to the sport’s best-watched race annually in Daytona. Credit One executives were among those impressed by the reception. John Coombe, Credit One’s senior vice president for marketing, said that the TV numbers were a plus and that the company liked the feeling of being involved with one of the first sports events to return following two months of pandemic quarantine. 

That drove the company’s decision to try a new sport. The Credit One Bank Invitational will not likely hit 6 million viewers, but it will still get national exposure with Tennis Channel broadcasting the event.

“We’re still a brand that’s looking to improve our overall national brand awareness,” said Coombe. “So, anywhere that we can be where we have a large audience that matches up against the targets for our products, we want to have a brand presence.”

Bob Moran, the Volvo Car Open’s tournament director and head organizer of the Credit One exhibition, said that finding a title sponsor — though complicated because of the pandemic — was imperative for the event to happen. Moran said that sponsors he’s spoken with face a difficult decision this summer: whether to jump back into sports or play it safe and wait amid the continuing uncertainty.

“And as more and more events come out and more sponsorship opportunities come out, those ones that are waiting are saying, ‘You know what? The longer we wait, we’ll get left behind,’ and you don’t want to do that either,” Moran said.

Coombe said that Credit One and Charleston Tennis had previously discussed a possible naming-rights deal for Family Circle Tennis Stadium, where the exhibition is being held. Credit One’s undisclosed monetary sponsorship will be split evenly between a prize money pot for the event’s 16 players and a donation to the Medical University of South Carolina’s front-line health care workers.  

“We’re getting to that point where we want to get back out in the marketplace, and we want to do more good things for communities,” said Coombe. “This is a perfect opportunity to get additional awareness about our brand as well as help the local community.”

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