Does Tennis Really NEED Re-Inventing?
Tennis is one of the largest global sports with an estimated 1 Billion fans worldwide. The sport has enjoyed crazy growth in the last 20 years. For example, the prize money to win the U.S. Open in 2000 was $800,000 (Marat Safin & Venus Williams winners) compared to 2019 where it was $3.8 Million for the winners.
Much of this growth has to be attributed to the presence of many of the All-Time Greatest players (GOAT’s) playing during this time in Federer, Serena Williams, Nadal, and Djokovic.
Many people worry that the popularity of the sport is not increasing with the growth financially as the vast majority of the wealth is handle by the very top players. There’s no hate there from me, ballers gunna ball.
Is Tennis Going To Slowly Become Irrelevant?
People like Patrick Mouratoglou (Serena Williams Coach) say that the sport needs to be re-invented in order to continue to grow with the tennis fan of the future.
We live in a digital age where attention spans are shorter. Mouratoglou has said that tennis “hasn’t changed in the last 40 years” and “the format of tennis is too long” in an interview with Tennis Channel where he was explaining the reason for his new venture the Ultimate Tennis Showdown. This exhibition shows off pro players playing in a format with shortened scoring, a shot clock, and tech-savy integration with media and fans even amidst the Covid-19 restrictions. Some extremely cringe marketing but none the less an entertaining and much needed tennis event.
In order to see what could be done for tennis to make it more relevant, let’s look at other massive global sports that have changed the format of their sport to fit the changes in media and culture.
I can’t find any…
Don’t Change a Good Thing
When looking at other major sports in the world, I can’t find a single one who has majorly altered the format of their sport to keep up with changes in culture or media. Sure, sports evolve. Basketball developed a 3-point line and a shot clock which resulted in a faster game. Hockey has changed the rules slightly to make scoring more reasonable and to make the sport less savage. American Football has changed some of the rules to protect players.
But none of these sports have altered the format to make it significantly more “viewer friendly.”
The argument is that “tennis takes too long.” Well, people clearly love it. When a Grand Slam match goes 5 hours it begins to transcend sport and become an emotional and monumental experience for players and spectators alike.
Soccer is 90 minutes and with a halftime break, the match is going to be 2 hours. The event of it though, is what people are drawn to.
When the spectacle of sport is happening for true fans - time fades away.
Golf is another slow sport. It’s format has not changed drastically in recent years either, but die-hard golf fans still abound. Golf has adapted to include different styles of tournaments and has allowed much more media access than tennis has.
My feeling is that the people who love the sport will continue to love it, no matter what.
Tweeks are good, though. Tennis has introduced a shot clock between serves to help speed up play for those stragglers who tend to take their time between points. This has frustrated some players, but has helped boring matches not drag on as much.
What Can Tennis Do?
One aspect of our free markets is that business have an insatiable desire to grow, grow, grow. While growth is great, it should not come at the cost of the integrity of the sport.
Tennis has been played basically the same way for over 100 years, and has survived many trials. The history that has been accumulated throughout the years is sacred. Changing the format of tennis would remove the future from the past. A terrible idea if you ask me.
Tennis needs to become more open to the media that the future fans consume: social media. We need more access to the players that we care about. I don’t think kids want to see Federer in another stuffy interview as much as they would want to see him teach us how to do a tweener or give us secrets on how to hit THE SLICE.
The ATP has a very closed grip on the content that it produces, which is fine. But tennis fans like to relate to their stars and one of the complaints about the current state of tennis is that it’s not as engaging. What better opportunity to engage with tennis fans do we have than through social media?
Events like Laver Cup, World Team Tennis, The ATP Cup, and Davis Cup have become more popular and are starting to show some diversity in viewing options for our sport.
Tennis is in great hands. We have the stars like Coco Gauff, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Dominic Thiem, Bianca Andreescu (to name just a few) who will take us in to the future. We can tweek little things here and there to make tennis more engaging in the social media era, but changing the format of the sport would be disastrous in my mind.
by Stephen Boughton, chief fire starter @theslicetennis
