Does tennis have an age problem? Patrick Mouratoglou, the 54-year-old French tennis coach and pundit thinks so, and he wants to fix it.
“Tennis hasn’t recruited new fans now for decades and, of course, no young fans,” he confidently asserts. “It’s the same fan base as the one which was created in the ’70s and ’80s, that is just getting older. Something had to be done for tennis,” says the man who made his name coaching players such as Serena Williams and Holger Rune.
So, when Covid put paid to normal scheduling in 2020, Mouratoglou tried to do it. He spearheaded a new format for the game: Ultimate Tennis Showdown (UTS), an international individual tennis league.
In his view, tennis’s length and formal etiquette were putting it behind the curve. “People under 40 are spending a lot of time on social media, streaming platforms, video games,” he points out. “The formats are short, super dynamic, very authentic, very immersive. Tennis is long, very slow, not authentic, and not immersive.”
UTS was his answer. Events consist of eight-player tournaments played over a few days. Games are short, sharp and geared towards dramatic impact.
Each game consists of four quarters of 8 minutes each and you win a quarter by having the most points when time runs out (the usual 15, 30, 40 scoring is replaced by single points). The first to win three quarters takes the match or, in the case of a tie, it goes to sudden death.
The serve alternates every two points and there is no second serve. Only 15 seconds is allowed between points. Players can raise the stakes with a “bonus card”, tripling the value of the next point.
The slightly frantic atmosphere this creates could hardly be more different to the polite decorum of Wimbledon. And this is exactly what Mouratoglou wants.
“Tennis is the most frustrating sport on the planet,” he explains. “Players are supposed to be perfect and show no emotions, which makes no sense to me. It’s the opposite of what people are asking for. People want emotion.”
A deliberately loose code of conduct allows spectators to make as much noise as they like during rallies, the sound accompanied by a courtside DJ. Players, who are fitted with a microphone, can interact with one another and the crowd, and give live interviews between quarters.
Personalities and player branding are central in UTS, with nicknames reminiscent of boxing or darts. “The Power” Jack Draper, “The Chessmaster” Daniil Medvedev, and “The Warrior” Ons Jabeur have all taken part.
Other sports, too, are looking to shorter, flashier formats to win over the TikTok generation. In football, a seven-a-side “Kings League” involves 40-minute games, bonus cards, and fan participation. LIV Golf and new Formula 1 “sprints” are part of this same trend. For similar reasons, Olympics fans will be able to watch the action-packed rugby sevens and 3×3 basketball events, later this month.
Many in tennis hope to emulate the roaring success of Twenty20 cricket, a format that began professionally in 2003 and slashed the length of a limited-overs match from all day to just 2.5 hours.
As with T20, a shorter match of a predictable length should be popular with broadcasters. However, Ed Mallaburn, senior vice-president at IMG Media, thinks that networks and media platforms are satisfied with the current tennis offering. “I don’t know [the UTS] business model, but the broadcast revenue . . . would be negligible, I would have thought,” he says.
Still, Mouratoglou is confident. Like most tennis competitions, UTS’s revenue comes roughly evenly from broadcasting rights, ticket sales, and sponsorship.
“It’s quite new so, of course, it takes time to establish the brand,” argues Mouratoglou. He expects UTS to break even next year.
But while the new format claims to offer a solution, others — like Mallaburn — insist the ‘problem’ is not there. “I would say tennis is in rude health, personally,” he says.
14%Increase in TV audience for French Open at Roland Garros this year
Mallaburn thinks it is simply the entertainment landscape that has changed, with people consuming sport via non-live clips and creator content. “The monetisation of this content is different. But the appetite, certainly for tennis, is huge.”
This year’s French Open at Roland Garros suggests there is truth to this. Coverage of the tournament achieved a TV audience peak of 7.3mn — up 14 per cent compared with last year. Live streaming of the tournament was up 47 per cent, while a record number of fans — 675,000 — went to watch the tournament in person. The French Tennis Federation also said it attracted 1bn views to its social media videos.
Mouratoglou does not deny this success. “I was very happy at Roland Garros to see so many young fans. But, unfortunately, that’s a few weeks per year.” His concern is that tennis is not retaining year-round fans, outside of the big tournaments.
However, year-long tournaments such as the ATP Tour are still attracting enthusiasts. According to ATP Media, the tour’s cumulative audience in 2023 was 1.1bn people: a 28 per cent increase on the year before.
Eurosport, which is part of the Warner Bros Discovery stable, renewed its rights to broadcast the ATP Tour to much of continental Europe, last year, with talk of increasing its coverage for the next three years. In the UK and Ireland, Sky has just committed to broadcasting the ATP Tour for five years.
Last month, Warner Bros also signed a 10-year rights deal to be the exclusive broadcaster of Roland Garros in the US. “They were such an engaged buyer, so enthusiastic about painting the picture of tennis,” says Mallaburn (IMG represents the French Tennis Federation to the US media). “They were screaming out for that content.”
UTS’s impact on the tennis calendar, and tennis viewing, will become clearer in the next year or so. For now, though, it at least adds entertainment value. As Mouratoglou points out: “I’m not saying they should break rackets. I’m saying they should be allowed to if they want to. That’s their image, that’s their problem. It’s their racket, also, by the way.”
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