© Sara Quinnett/On the Baseline Tennis News
The reasons for tennis’ poor popularity are well-known; the scoring is hard to learn, the players don’t always honor their commitments, it costs too much to attend tournaments, finding it on television in the USA is difficult, and the list could go on and on.
However, I believe there are at least six things that the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour could do to help improve women’s tennis’ popularity not only in the United States, but worldwide.
Help Improve the Public’s Understanding of the Game
Comment poster Will.I.Am brought this up last week in the Open Forum Friday discussion. “To a lot of people, the scoring is confusing, and it’s a difficult game to learn how to play,” he said.
True, compared to basketball or baseball, tennis is more confusing. I enjoy watching tennis with friends and family new to the sport, but they all run into the same roadblock. They don’t understand the scoring system.
One of the things I’ve appreciated about tennis’ new instant replay is that during almost every televised match, the networks take a few minutes to explain how the challenge system works. Why not instruct the commentators to take ninety seconds and give a brief overview of how the game is scored? You can’t assume that everyone watching a match actually understands how the game is played.
Make Live Matches Available on the Internet
The ATP Tour has successfully streamed live matches over the past few seasons, but the WTA Tour is lagging behind. The Tour has said that they will be launching an “extensive broadband service” in 2009, but as for 2008, we can only expect to see select Tier I matches aired live.
Sony Ericsson WTA Tour, your fans are not just asking for this service, they are even willing to pay for it.
Stop Selling Sex and Start Selling Skill and Intelligence
How have the mighty fallen! Thirty years ago, Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova, and Company would have pitched fits over the sexist mentality now dominating the sport. There will always be players eager to showcase their bodies in calendars, magazines, and advertisements, but does the governing body of women’s tennis have to assist them?
Take a look at this screenshot from the Tour’s new video clip theater and note that three of the last six features are selling a player’s body, instead of their abilities.
Tennis is fortunate to have many personable, witty, and highly intelligent stars in its ranks. How about a few clips of the women completing college degrees while on Tour, running foundations to promote good, or encouraging kids to be successful in life?
Time to make use of these players as positive role models, instead of highlighting physical features that will be a thing of the past in twenty-five years or so.
Help Fans Embrace Stars From Other Countries
David Beckham, Ronaldinho, and Yao Ming have each proven that international athletes can be embraced by mainstream America. The general public needs to know why they can cheer for the Serbians, the Russians, the Chinese, and other countries accomplishing big things on the Tour.
If you think most Americans do not care about tennis now, wait until Venus and Serena Williams retire. Then it will be too late to start emphasizing global talent.
Make Sure the Best Players Participate in Top Tier Tournaments
Once you start getting the public interested in players, it is vital that the players participate in the top Tier tournaments. Tennis’ existence cannot rely entirely on the Grand Slams—they only account for eight weeks of a season. Fans are hesitant to buy tickets for tournaments with a 50/50 (or less) chance that their favorite player will compete at the event. Obviously, injuries do happen, but for the new Roadmap 2010 plan to be successful with its Crown Jewel tournaments, the Tour must do everything possible to ensure that its players cooperate.
Improve the Tour’s Official Website
I could spend hours on MLB.com and I’m not even that much of a Major League Baseball fan. The reason is because it is a one-stop-shop for everything baseball and has all the video, live scoring, live radio, news, and statistics that I could ever need.
Do you want to know who hit the most double faults last year? Or are trying to find which tournaments offer free radio or live streaming content? Better take some time out of your day to look on Google, because the official website has none of this information. SonyEricssonWTATour.com seemed little more than a ghost town during the off-season. For nine days between December 3-12, not one news story was posted.
Ironically, tennis’ most popular blogs never missed a beat.
I respectfully disagree with your assessment on why tennis isn’t more popular. At least with the part on scoring. 15 – 30 – 40 – match is not even remotely confusing and simply not hard for anyone. People may say they “don’t get it” but what they mean is that they think it’s a silly format, not so much that they don’t grasp it.
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That said onto what can be done.
The “sex” thing.
I’ll say physical attraction. I think the thing is to combine a focus on both skills and appeal. I think it fair to say that many woman NFL fans have fav players that they find sexy. Actually traditionally in many quarters athletic women are often considered anti-sexy. The trad sexist view is that it’s men who are supposed to have buff, in-shape bodies and be hardcore athletes. Think about it – a muscular woman who is 6′2″, plays to ******* and grunts more than any man is considered sexy? I think that’s great. What I don’t think helps is the focus on it outside of an athletic context. E.g. The evening gown/pumps stuff.
Beyond that I think what would make a difference is camera use. The way matches are televised doesn’t use angles and perspectives that maximize the action. And as much as people complain about the aforementioned grunting, it adds sound effects that heighten the sense of action.
Making Women’s Tennis More Popular…
In case you missed it, here is an article at On the Baseline about what the WTA Tour can do to to improve the popularity of tennis (as a spectator sport). For the most part, I agree, especially with the suggestion to make sure the top players compete i…