Tennis News You Can Use
The Physical Activity Council (PAC) issues an annual report tracking sports, fitness, and recreation participation in the United States. The USTA and the Tennis Industry Association (TIA) lean pretty heavily on the 2021 report as the source of good news on tennis participation. In fact it is the go-to “filler” content used in periodic emailed newsletters from both organizations.
Back in February, “Geeking Out over Tennis Participation Data in the Physical Activity Council Report” analyzed the tennis participation data gleaned from the free public version of the PAC report. There were detailed statements made by the USTA and TIA on tennis participation that could not be substantiated using only that source. That led to the obvious conclusion that the funders of the PAC report had received a more detailed version of the report. That was confirmed this week when the TIA sent out an offer for direct purchase to its membership.
The report is priced at $1500 for non-members. The membership fee for a Participating Partner is $1250, so if anyone is inclined to purchase the report the obvious move is to join the TIA as a participating partner first. No one should pay full sticker price.
Prior to checking out the purchase price myself, I flashed through the thought exercise of how much I would be willing to pay for the report. Let’s just say that it was considerably below the $1250 point. That would buy a lot of vintage tennis books on the secondary market. There are better ways to spend my money.
However, the TIA offer sparked the realization that there might be readers of this blog that already have access to the Tennis Participation PAC Report. If anyone has access please reach out so we can determine if there is any way it can be shared with me without violating the distribution and information sharing restrictions which are undoubtedly attached to it.
Fiend at Court Site Comments
I have recently received additional out of band feedback that people are still unable to submit comments on the Fiend at Court website. The reason comments were shut off is because we were being inundated with sketchy spam comments promoting products that are unrelated to this site. Let’s just say they weren’t tennis related and were frequently products that I would not want this site to be associated with. I can’t spend all my waking hours policing comments.
I am still trying to find the right balance of unmoderated user interaction on this site. Comments have been turned back on, but first time submitters will require moderator approval before their comment is posted. We will see how that goes.
