Fiend at Court Unplugged
The Tokyo Olympics is the perfect illustration of one of the challenges that tennis has attracting television viewership in the United States. The daily order of play starts at 10pm ET and concludes about the time that most Americans are rolling out of bed the next morning. Casual fans aren’t likely to stumble across tennis matches during that hour. It’s a tough watch for even hard core tennis fans such as myself.
At the dawn of the Open Era, 75% of matches were played in North and South America. That means that tennis was played largely in domestic timezones for the continental United States. “When Tennis Left the United States” chronicles the correlation between the number of tournaments played during waking hours in the United States and the performance of American male tennis players 10 years later. The United States attracted more talent to tennis when matches were played on US time.
The USTA Membership Boom of the 1970s is largely believed to be fueled by the rise of League play for the organization. It is worth noting that the rapid rise in tennis participation also correlated to the start of the Open Era and the fact that so much professional tennis was played domestically at United States friendly times.
Tennis is a global sport. Attracting a global audience is the holy grail of sports media. The downside is that developing and maintaining international fans also requires that demographic to be served. That is how tennis winds up with “The Asian Swing” and tournaments in Russia and the Middle East.
In the United States, people have rituals around watching sports. Professional football is a really good example. During the NFL season, people would stream out the back of my childhood church as soon as the opening bars of the closing hymn rung out. In an attempt to stem the tide, our Senior pastor positioned one of the associate ministers by the back doors. That did encourage some people to stay for the entirety of the closing hymn and the Sending Forth. The Umpire Who Gave Birth to me would greet him warmly and ask if he was taking names. We were not going to miss the kickoff of the Dallas Cowboys game.
Tennis fans don’t have the same rituals. If they have any traditions at all for watching the sport, it centers around the Grand Slams. That makes four once a year occasions. For casual fans, it is probably a surprise when tennis turns up on the major networks for the Grand Slams. It is hard to develop a consistent fan base with “drive-by” media exposure.
In a recent No Challenges Remaining podcast, Donald Dell observed that in the rest of the world, tennis is usually the second most watched sport. In the United States, tennis is ninth at best. Paradoxically, the size of the United States market still exerts profound influence over tennis media contracts. The market is too large to ignore. The night session at Rolland Garros this year that started at 9pm local time in Paris is a prime example. That is 3pm on the United States east coast.
The Tokyo Olympics shows the inherent problem with timezones. In this case, it exists for all sports at the games, not just tennis. Most Americans will experience the Tokyo Olympics as a series of sports talk shows peppered with replays and highlights. Tennis is unlikely to garner much attention in that coverage.
The timezone issue is an intractable problem for tennis media promotion in the United States. Tournaments can’t and shouldn’t be moved to better accommodate the United States market. The tennis industry needs creative ideas for how to better package tennis that attracts viewership in the United States. That is where my brain was at when I pitched a series of tennis reality shows back in April.
In addition to the timezone issue, Donald Dell cited the fragmented nature of how media rights for tennis are sold. Each Grand Slam tournament is individually owned and negotiated. The ATP and WTA are separate business organizations. That makes finding cohesive creative solutions even more daunting.
Out of the box ideas are needed. Breaking tradition… isn’t exactly the strong suit of tennis. Neither is working together.
- Donald Dell, No Challenges Remaining Podcast, Episode 299b, May 13, 2021.
