Will Tennis Keep Up with the Sports Entertainment Industry?
by Selma Cadar
The entertainment industry is currently the fastest-growing industry. Tennis has always been popular among sports enthusiasts, from making headlines in newspapers to being televised in black and white. With modern technology, the internet, and social media, watching and accessing a tennis match is only a few clicks away. The entertainment sports industry is now at an all-time high, as it can be accessed anywhere. Many popular global sports, such as soccer and basketball, compete for “fans’ money and attention” (The Economist, 2019). Sports continuously change, adapt, and develop like other fields and professions. The future of sports seems to be heading in a positive direction for the fans, but what sports will be able to continue to captivate and keep engaged millions of loyal viewers and fans globally? A strong question regarding the ongoing competition between sports is: Can tennis keep up?
Challenges in Audience Engagement in Tennis
Andrea Gaudenzi, Chairman of ATP, offered an intriguing glimpse into the mind of a leader who embodies the world of sports and technology. Having formerly been a tennis player himself, Gaudenzi’s knowledge and experience uniquely position him to understand and address the challenges faced by the ATP – "The balance between the tradition of the core rule of the sport and how much do we innovate to adapt to the changes. I think it's very delicate and it's very complex, I always felt that in our world there's so much to do on how we govern the sport and how we commercialize it and we go about sales and distribution and the challenges that we have with our fragmentation. That this is probably in light of the 80 20 rule, you know focus on the 20 that deliver 80 of the value that's what we need to focus first because ultimately we have a billion fan around the world that love tennis but our problem is that we struggle with the distribution for reaching even a greater audience but mostly engaging properly with that audience keep them more engaged" (Saleh, 2023). Bizzozero et al.’s study on an average audience of approximately 100,000 viewers at Wimbledon discovered that surprise and suspense are the most important impacting factors for live TV audiences – “a one standard deviation increase in suspense and surprise combined corresponds roughly to a 3% audience increase.” (Bizzozero et al., 2016). Historically, tennis has embraced new technologies and has to continue to evolve alongside the entertainment industry to keep up with other in-demand sports.
How does tennis compete with other sports in the entertainment industry?
According to Horberry’s survey, in 2023, “the most watched sport in the world is football (AKA soccer for our US cousins), with 53% following, watching, or simply interested. Next comes basketball at 40%, volleyball at 34% and tennis at 32%.” (Horberry, 2023). Furthermore, in terms of fans, tennis is ranked number 4 with 5 approximately 1 billion fans in Europe, Asia, and America; soccer is number 1 with 3.5 billion fans in Europe, Africa, Asia, and America (World Atlas, 2023). Besides the direct competition to maintain fans, reach new audiences, and make profits in global sports, the modern media model adds another challenge for the next 10 to 15 years to shift from its linear model to digital (Saleh, 2023).
Recent Developments
There have been recent developments in the tennis world that seem to have great potential in boosting tennis even higher in terms of audience engagement in the sports industry. For example the “Six Kings Slam” tennis exhibition tournament in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia had its first edition in October 2024 and featured top 10 tennis players such as Jannik Sinner, Novak Djokovic, Rafel Nadal, Carlos Alcaraz, etc. The tournament did not offer any points that would benefit the players rankings but had the biggest prize money in tennis history, 6 million dollars. The tournament even had a promotional advertisement in the form of a movie trailer, “Six Kings, One Throne”, that had complex aesthetics that reinforced warriors and heroes from movies which strongly appealed to audiences. A similar exhibition tournament (players don’t receive ranking points) but on a much smaller scale is currently in progress (December, 2024) for women in the World Tennis League that takes place in Abu Dhabi which consists of a total prize money of 20 million dollars. The tournaments are too recent to know exactly the extent of their impact on audience engagement and viewership but such tournaments appear to challenge traditional tennis tournaments and viewership norms through their unconventional methods (loud music, narratives, no ranking points awarded, etc.). With emerging events and organizations such as the Netflix’s series, “Break Point”, the “Six Kings Slams” exhibition tournament, the World Tennis League and the UTS Tour it seems that there are on-going initiatives and emerging trends that perhaps aim to address the question previously posed: Will tennis keep up with the sports entertainment industry?
References
Alalshikh, T. [Turki Alalshikh]. (2024, February). Six Kings Slam | Six Kings. One Throne 🔥 [Video]. YouTube.
Bizzozero, P., Flepp, R., & Franck, E. (2016). The importance of suspense and surprise in entertainment demand: Evidence from wimbledon. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 130, 47–63. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2016.07.006
Horberry, R. (2023a, July 20). What are the most watched sports in the world?. GWI. https://blog.gwi.com/chart-of-the-day/worlds-most-popular-sports/
Saleh, T. (2023, January 5). ATP & Pif announce multi-year strategic partnership to accelerate the growth of Global Tennis: ATP tour: Tennis. ATP Tour. https://www.atptour.com/en/news/atp-pif-strategic-partnership-february-2024#:~:text=To gether%2C%20ATP%20and%20PIF%20will,growth%20opportunities%20across%20the %20sport.
The Economist Newspaper. (2019b, October 5). Competition between sports for fans’ money and attention is increasingly fierce. The Economist. https://www.economist.com/international/2019/10/05/competition-between-sports-for-fan s-money-and-attention-is-increasingly-fierce
WorldAtlas. (2023, September 13). The most popular sports in the world. WorldAtlas. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-are-the-most-popular-sports-in-the-world.html