The ATP and WTA tours have partnered to create a new app that provides tennis schedules, scores, and news. I loaded it to my phone over the weekend for a test drive and instantly fell in love. All serious tennis fans should load have this app loaded on their mobile devices. It makes it so much easier to watch and follow professional tennis on both tours.
I don’t think that it is much of a stretch to say that I am a tennis super fan. “Exhibit A” would be the length of continuous publication of this site. At the same time, I am painfully self-aware that I am not the “typical” tennis fan, especially when it comes to watching professional tennis. I am usually more interested in the “outer” courts in the early stages of a tournament than those assigned to the stadium and featured on the Tennis Channel.
The new app makes it easy to quickly find great matches that the tennis broadcast illuminati will never promote. Last weekend, I went to bed Friday night armed with the knowledge that a WTA doubles match would be starting the next morning at the precise moment my alarm clock went off. The ATP WTA Live app is a game changer for people who follow the entire draw and not just center court.
The ATP WTA app allows the user to see all match times translated to their local time zone. Last year I dedicated a post to writing about how time zones are one of the most significant challenge inherent to effective promotion of televised tennis. Of all the features in the new app, the expression of match times in my local time might be the one that I am more excited about.
I frequently watch matches “on demand” and prefer a viewing experience when I am “not spoiled” on the outcome of the match. Consequently, the fact that the app provides the “Order of Play” for each tournament is an essential feature for identifying what matches occurred during the day.
The new “ATP WTA Live” app gives me a mechanism where I can plausibly access the Order of Play without having to look at the scores. It will likely take deliberate focus toward the top of the screen to pull off the navigation required to reach that page without inadvertently seeing the score. However, the new app appears to be orders of magnitude better than googling for individual tournament Order of Play sheets. That exercise produces a minefield of recent scores that can completely ruin the viewing experience.
This is not one of those “wait and see” situations. Serious fans of tennis will want to load the ATP WTA Live app on their phones at the earliest opportunity. I think it will prove to be the most effective mechanism to promote tennis unveiled this decade. Even if that doesn’t transpire, it will transform individual engagement experiences and that is enough on its own merits.
Get the App: Apple IOS and Google Play
At the end of first paragraph in the phrase, “It make it so much easier”, “make” should be “made” or “makes”.
The correction is made. Thanks!