The Tennis Channel Needs to Get Its Act Together

Last November, the Tennis Channel launched a new streaming service. It was touted as an all-in-one product that combines the live 24/7 broadcast channel with the on-demand streaming service previously marketed as Tennis Channel Plus. The simplified subscription model was positioned as an improvement for consumers.

Masked behind that customer-first perspective was a stark reality. More and more cable services were either eliminating the Tennis Channel 24/7 broadcast entirely from their lineups or pushing it into more expensive service tiers. For a network that largely generates revenue from ads, losing subscribers was devastating. In essence, they were forced to add the 24/7 channel to their Tennis Plus streaming service. When they did that, even more cable companies cut the network.

Now operating primarily as a streaming service, the Tennis Channel finds itself in unfamiliar territory. That is deeply unfortunate because the product simply isn’t good. The Tennis Channel has a built-in advantage as the only game in town for tennis fans whose interest in the sport extends beyond Grand Slam coverage. While that captive audience gives the network a safety net, even its most loyal viewers routinely encounter an overall substandard experience. At best, the Tennis Channel is barely hanging on to an increasingly frustrated subscriber base. They are not positioned at all to grow the sport’s viewership at a time when that is exactly what tennis needs.

In the radio business, a P1 listener refers to an individual who has a strong station preference, meaning they listen to it almost exclusively. Whatever the equivalent is for streaming services, that is what I am for the Tennis Channel. However, I rarely watch the 24/7 feed before the semi-finals and final, because it is the early rounds on the outer courts that are generally more compelling. Consequently, I spend most of my engagement with the Tennis Channel on the Plus side of the product.

As a sign the network was in way over its head as a primary streaming service, the initial unified product deployed last November on the Amazon FireTV platform would exit the Tennis Channel app entirely when a viewer hit the “back” button. That meant users were unceremoniously dumped out of the service mid-session, counter to the de facto standard established by virtually every other sports and entertainment streaming platform. Fortunately, that issue has since been fixed, and the back button now behaves as expected. It’s evidence of just how unprepared the Tennis Channel was for the streaming era, starting with that huge unforced error.

I have a litany of items that cause poor customer experience when using the streaming app, and I am coming to believe that most of them are rooted in a flawed technological approach to streaming and storing content. I think they are recording live broadcasts and then later copying them over to the streaming service for replays. As an example, when a match ends, there is a period of time before it is available as a replay. That time seems to vary from match to match, which suggests that a human is performing that work.

Additionally, sometimes there are egregious mistakes on the replays. Earlier this week, I tried to watch a WTA doubles match between Asia Muhammad and Demi Schuurs against Nadiia Kichenok and Nicole Melichar-Martinez. Instead, I was treated to a match-length version of a test pattern from Los Angeles. I guess whoever was supposed to press record in the studio didn’t select the right video feed.

One feature I wish the Tennis Channel offered is the ability to watch a match in progress from the beginning. Essentially, that is logically starting to watch the replay before the match has finished. It is likely the Tennis Channel can’t do that because the replay is a separate file that doesn’t exist yet. Even my Tivo box, which I have had for more than a decade, offers that feature. Fixing that architectural deficiency is something the Tennis Channel could do if they were willing to invest in the right talent and technology.

Another example of the Tennis Channel’s inability to master technology can be experienced when attempting to stream consecutive matches back-to-back on the same court. It is impossible to get a continuous feed that seamlessly moves to the next match. Rather, the first match feed is available for some time after the match ends, but then it is terminated without starting the stream for the next match.

However, it gets worse. The user must refresh the page repeatedly to see when the next match goes live, and even once it is marked that way, clicking it returns a “Your live stream hasn’t started yet” dead-end message. Every other streaming service in the world runs a loop communicating that the event will start soon, and then automatically starts the live feed once it is available. Instead, the Tennis Channel forces its streaming viewers to flip back and forth. I have missed the first few games of so many matches because I got distracted during the constant refreshing.

The Tennis Channel is failing to monetize its captive audience. Other sports streamers embed ads that are unobtrusive and accepted by their customer base. It’s a missed opportunity that highlights just how far behind the network is in basic streaming execution. Of course, they would need to keep their customers engaged to fully reap the benefits of those ads.

Even the recently “fixed” back button still has issues. While the app no longer completely dumps users out of the Tennis Channel app, it still fails to meet another basic expectation: saving viewer progress. If you exit a replay—intentionally or not—and then restart it, the match begins again from the very start. In a sport where total runtime is a spoiler, this is infuriating. Every other streaming platform has nailed that basic functionality. The fact that the Tennis Channel hasn’t suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of how people actually watch the network’s title sport.

Sadly, there are countless other friction points in the Tennis Channel streaming experience. The entire platform feels like it was designed without input from actual tennis fans or anyone with a baseline understanding of modern streaming expectations. I’d gladly volunteer to be part of a user focus group to help them understand where things are going wrong and how to fix them. But honestly, what they really need is to hire someone who knows what they’re doing and then invest in building a service that tennis fans deserve. Because right now, Tennis Channel isn’t just missing an opportunity—they’re squandering their captive audience.

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1. What you get from Tennis Channel’s new, all-in-one streaming service, Tennis, November 12, 2024