At last year’s Wimbledon, Novak Djokovic was beaten in straight sets by an almost pitch-perfect Carlos Alcaraz, a man 16 years his junior. However, the Serb was thinking about the future of tennis before he got to that painful endgame. “In terms of innovation in our sport, we have to figure out how to attract a young audience,” said the 24-time major champion. The ATP and WTA know they need to reach out to the younger generation with rule changes on the court but be equally connected to the audience’s technological bandwidth too.
The Big Three is no longer a thing. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have retired and Djokovic’s sand timer is running out of grain. “I think they have kind of really only marketed three players for the last decade and now it’s kind of caught up with them,” Nick Kyrgios claimed in 2022. The men’s tour is trying to ignite the senses beyond the majors by reshaping the game’s blood, sweat and tears as a touchpoint.
The WTA narrative has revolved around the Iga Swiatek and Aryna Sabalenka axis for a few years. Coco Gauff is a Grand Slam champion and has a standout social media presence that can engage with Gen Z, Millennials and even Gen Alpha. With 17-year-old Mirra Andreeva bursting onto the scene, there’s a real feeling that the time is now ripe for women’s tennis to capture the zeitgeist.
Traditionally, tennis has had a conservative audience with an average age that is in the 50s. Younger viewers digest content in snappier ways. The Next Gen Finals has tried to quicken the pulse with a faster four-game set format, a simplified scoreboard and less dead time between points. Serena Williams’ former coach Patrick Mouratoglou broke the mould by creating the Ultimate Tennis Showdown, a funky format with an immersive set-up designed to create crowd interaction that dances to the tune of the digital age.
ATP Tour CEO Massimo Calvelli has admitted that Millennials and Gen Z are not an easy demographic for tennis to reach. However, his organisation has recently partnered with youth-focused media brand Overtime to provide content around ATP events, including Masters 1000 tournaments and the end of season ATP Finals. Although contract financials weren’t disclosed, the vision is clearly to hit that social media sweet spot.
“Younger audiences are social first when it comes to sports consumption and that drives how we reach and connect with them,” Overtime CEO Dan Porter told me. “Working with the ATP is an opportunity to bring tennis and the culture around tennis and players into the social consumption habits of the younger demographic.”
This time last year, Overtime expanded their successful NFL partnership and were on track to generate $100 million of revenue. Four-fifths of the Overtime audience is under 35 and the content will feature “unique exclusive access” including individual player pieces made available across the agency’s social media channels, which enjoy over 100 million followers.
“On social media, the shape of the tennis court from the main TV angles does not lend itself neatly to short form 1080 x 1920 reels or stories, and the stars, as a rule, haven’t wholeheartedly bought into the medium,” said James Tollington, Group Director of global sports marketing agency, Fuse.
“For these reasons, the ATP’s announcement with Overtime would seem to make sense – particularly if it produces socially native content that matches the quality of some its biggest content successes.”
Overtime already operates proprietary basketball, football, and boxing leagues whose rosters are full of young athletes from between 16 and 20. The focus is on emerging talent, asking questions that click with its young consumers. This approach is enhanced by the employment of fans of the brand, TikTok creators, and college-aged personnel who can speak the language of athlete and user.
Netflix famously tried to catch the drift of the digital age with its Break Point series, made by the same team that produced the thriving Drive to Survive. Going behind the scenes of a sport in transition with personality-focused, immersive content sounded good on paper, but it was cancelled after two series due to low viewership and access issues with elite players.
Hot on the heels of the ATP-Overtime partnership came the news that the WTA has refreshed its logo. WTA Ventures, the commercial arm of the organization, was at the head of the creative campaign rolled out across digital platforms and on-site branding during during the BNP Paribas event at Indian Wells, won by Andreeva on Sunday.
The bite-size thrust of the piece sat within the template of Gen Z social feeds. The 30 to 60-second clips by players like Gauff, Ons Jabeur and Naomi Osaka signaled “a new era” in women’s tennis. A big part of the rebrand is to attract younger fans who engage with sport primarily through social media.
“The WTA will no doubt be watching the output closely, and the ATP will be doing the same with the WTA’s rebrand. The design is perhaps not as game-changing in the Gen Z space as the Overtime deal for the moment, but it will have been created with Gen Z in mind and will look to build on some promising 2024 numbers that saw the WTA’s social following increase by 25%,” said Tollington.
Some of the most memorable Grand Slam finals have been five sets of pure theater. The new age of sports fans can’t dig five hours of five sets. The digital natives are getting restless. Broadcasters are changing their tune while tennis authorities will continue to pursue the next generation of viewers with a product that chimes with their audience’s time.