IMG Acquires Tennis Week and Tennisweek.com

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--IMG, the world’s premier sports, entertainment and media company, today announced that it has acquired Tennis Week Magazine and its companion online news site tennisweek.com. The transaction closed on December 22, 2006. Terms were not disclosed.

Known as the “insider’s guide to the game,” Tennis Week is a leading tennis publication, with a circulation of 60,000 subscribers and a reputation for always going behind court lines to provide the sport’s most in-depth reports of industry business to locker room chats with its top stars. Tennisweek.com provides instant coverage of the Grand Slams, the ATP and WTA Tours, in addition to major collegiate, junior and senior events. It reaches millions of visitors annually with up-to-the-minute scores, rankings, earnings, schedules, tournament draws and camps.

IMG plans to launch a fully re-conceptualized first issue of Tennis Week in mid-March, at the Sony Ericsson Open, with a schedule of six glossy, perfect-bound, 100+ page issues in 2007.

“We are thrilled to add Tennis Week and tennisweek.com to IMG’s fast-growing stable of insider print and online publications, extending the Company’s reach from the fashion elite to the tennis elite,” said Chuck Bennett, Senior Corporate Vice President of IMG.

In 2003, IMG introduced The Daily, the leading fashion week publication in the United States, with a loyal readership of more than 100,000 fashion and media executives and opinion leaders. The Daily MINI, and fashionweekdaily.com were subsequently introduced to extend coverage between fashion weeks to this influential audience.

Brandusa Niro, Editor in Chief and Publications Director for The Daily Group, IMG’s publications division, commented, “We intend to capitalize on Tennis Week’s 60,000-plus upscale subscribers and its 32-year history as the ‘insider bible’ of the tennis world, and bring to it the winning publishing formula that has made The Daily and The Daily MINI the fashion insiders’ must-read magazines.”

Andrea Leand, formerly of Tennis Week, has been named Executive Director of Tennis Week for IMG. Leand, a former touring professional tennis player, graduated from Princeton University in 1998 and received her MBA from Johns Hopkins School of Business in 2003.

Tennis Week Magazine was founded in 1974 by Eugene L. Scott, a former Davis cup player with a world ranking as high as #11. Scott remained publisher and editor in chief of Tennis Week until his death on March 20, 2006 at the age of 68.

“IMG’s acquisition of Tennis Week and tennisweek.com is the result of talks Gene began before he died,” said Tennis Week President Polly Scott, who inherited ownership of the magazine from her husband. “He recognized that both the magazine and the web site had enormous potential for growth and was very excited about those possibilities. Tennis Week has come a long way from its beginnings as an eight-page publication on newsprint, and Gene would be proud to see IMG evolving the publication in order to take the Tennis Week brand to new heights.”

Bennett concluded, “Gene was both an incredibly accomplished tennis player and a visionary business executive who built an impressive publishing business to chronicle and promote the sport he loved. We are honored to be able to carry on the legacy he began so many years ago.”

About IMG

IMG is the world's premier Sports, Entertainment and Media Company. IMG is a diversified global business with two major business segments: IMG Sports & Entertainment, and IMG Media. IMG employs over 2,500 people in 30 countries. Forstmann Little & Co. purchased IMG in 2004.

IMG Sports & Entertainment includes: consulting services; event ownership and management; fashion events and models representation; licensing; golf course design; client representation in golf, tennis, broadcasting, European football, rugby, cricket, motorsports, coaching, Olympic sports and action sports. In addition, IMG Academies are the world's largest and most advanced, state-of-the-art, multi-sport training and educational facility, delivering world-class sports training experiences to over 12,000 junior, collegiate, adult and professional athletes each year.

IMG Media, which includes our content production subsidiaries TWI, Darlow Smithson Productions and Tiger Aspect Productions, is recognized as a global leader in the delivery of traditional and new media content and services, with Internet, broadband and mobile expertise, transforming how audiences access and interact with content.

IMG Media produces and distributes over 10,000 hours of sports, documentary, drama, comedy, entertainment, popular factual and children's content annually, over multiple platforms across 200 countries, including award-winning television and radio programming. It also represents the broadcast rights to many of the world's premier sporting events and has the world's biggest sports archive with more than 200,000 hours of footage.

More information about IMG is available at www.imgworld.com, www.darlowsmithson.com and www.tigeraspect.co.uk