Fiend at Court Unplugged
Today I am taking a somewhat broader view of participation in NTRP Tennis tournaments. For reasons that I explained yesterday, I am focused on data from my home section of Texas. Additionally, due to the workload required to sanitize and scrub data scraped off the USTA TennisLink site, I am continuing to focus only on the women’s divisions.
I have been comparing player participation data between 2017 and 2018 because that is an inflection point before and after the inception of the NTRP National Championships. Until the end of 2017 there were no NTRP 50+ divisions. Additionally, that was before the chance to advance to the NTRP National Championships existed as an incentive for players to play. It is a valuable to examine the impact of those tournament format modifications when considering the forthcoming changes to the Adult Tournament structure for 2021.
Yesterday, I considered the impact that adding Women’s 50+ had on overall participation in Women’s 3.5 singles. The data between 2017 and 2018 reflects that participation was flat between the two years. The conclusion I drew was that the addition of the extra age tier did not drive or draw additional participation.
Today I am stepping back and examining participation at all levels of NTRP tournaments in Texas across those same two years. In 2017, there were 1629 women who participated in at least one NTRP tournament in Texas. 2018 saw that participation number decline to 1523. In other words, despite the addition of the NTRP National Championships as an incentive and the addition of age tiers, overall participation dropped by 106 players which is roughly a 6.5% decline.
On the surface, it would appear that the NTRP National Championship initiative was a failure, at least as reflected by the participation numbers in Texas. Before staking that claim, it is necessary to take one more peek backwards to the 2016 participation numbers. There were 1780 active tournament players in 2016. Thus 151 players were lost between 2016 and 2017 or roughly 8.5%. Ouch.
Focusing exclusively on the NTRP National Championship for a moment, I have been asserting the position that the initiative did not work since USTA Adult tennis tournament participation numbers have continued to decline. I am now forced to reconsider that position.
The stark reality is that USTA Adult tennis tournament participation has been in sharp decline for quite some time. While the addition of the NTRP National Championships did not halt or reverse the trend, the initiative did slow the attrition rate. Slightly.
I am still not sold on the necessity of the USTA NTRP National Championships. At the same time, I do have to acknowledge that even though the participation numbers have continued to decline in my home section of Texas, that it does have a perceptible benefit in slowing the attrition rate. It buys the USTA some time to find the right lever to pull to build additional future participation.
I am still crunching the numbers on the impact of dividing NTRP levels by age. My first glance at the data suggests that dividing into age tiers does not conjure up new players. I plan to explore that more fully in the Fiend At Court Unplugged series which resumes next Friday.
In the interim, the decision to eliminate mixed doubles from NTRP tournament play continues to befuddle me. Eliminating a popular match format that has been drawing players to tournaments seems like the exact opposite of what should be attempted in order to further staunch the decline.
