With a spate of 250 tournaments in recent weeks leading to all-time low fan engagement, is a formula 1 style season the answer?
By Myre Aberdan
Tennis over the last few weeks has been quieter than a cemetery at midnight. With ATP 250s filling the schedule, from the Hall of Fame Championships, to the Bastad and Gstaad 250 level tournaments, tennis come to a screeching halt post-majors. It has also come to a stage where a tough conversation must be had.
What is so striking is that tennis is considered the 5th largest sport in the world. Ironically, a much smaller sport, in formula 1, manages to pull astronomical levels of engagement, fortnight to fortnight, all year round.
Over the last 14 days, you would be hard-pressed to find anybody who was tuning into any form of tennis. Formula 1, on the other hand, is flooded in conversation. Tennis is simply not covered in the papers during weeks like these, and there is no tennis equivalent of a Skip and Shannon style debate show. With limited discussion in mainstream circles, and almost no memes or dialogue occurring on social media about tennis, the sport finds itself staring down the barrel of being completely usurped by smaller sports like formula 1.
What is particularly worrisome is the demographics, with astronomically more women following formula 1, week to week, than tennis. In a sport which has it’s own dedicated tour just for women (WTA), this is quite alarming.
What is also cause for concern is that formula 1 has a such high fan engagement, that there are dedicated pages across the internet which solely circulate memes. Unfortunately, there is not much to talk about during the weeks of Bastad and Gstaad, for people to converse about.
This brings a serious dilemma for tennis long term. Is the answer to tennis more majors? Tournaments spread across different countries, every few weeks, with a fortnight between tournaments? Should smaller tournaments be done away with in favour of more majors in different countries? Neither of these ideas are great, but for engagement to increase, something has to be done.