“The seven kingdoms of tennis”
Why does this sport have to be so complicated?
Welcome back to Club Sportico, where we break down the intersection of sports and money—with an extra bit of humor and opinion. Today, we’re talking about ground strokes 🎾 and land grabs 👊.
July and August should universally be known as tennis season. From the start of Wimbledon through the end of the U.S. Open, the sport has an opportunity to grab fans before football fever takes over America (and futbol fever the rest of the world). There could be marquee matches at predictable times on weekend afternoons and weekday evenings, featuring known stars playing for clear stakes.
There aren’t.
Instead, a series of tournaments largely come and go, with different groups of players competing at changing times for ranking points that only a Taylor Swift-level numerologist could truly appreciate. Then everyone makes their way to New York, where ESPN re-introduces viewers to the players they last saw in England, assuming they’ve arrived unscathed.
Why?
Well, a big part of the reason is that tennis is not “Tennis,” the way that NASCAR, WWE, or the NFL are proper nouns. In fact, reporter Ben Rothenberg explained to me, there are really more like seven tennises.
The four biggest events have swelled from two-week to three-week affairs, with new draws like the U.S. Open’s mixed doubles tournament. ATP events have expanded to 12 days, trying to be more like the slams. But the result has been that many top players skip some events, while others break down over the course of a grinding calendar. The inconsistency makes the product less appealing to media partners, leaving the events on the Tennis Channel and a corresponding streaming service.
“There’s some exhaustion going on,” Rothenberg says. “But there also seems to be a persistence with this push by the tours; they haven’t relented despite pretty unanimous player complaints.”
The Cincinnati Open got a meeting of world No. 1 Jannik Sinner and world No. 2 Carlos Alcaraz for its final—the first time they’d faced each other in a tourney between Wimbledon and the U.S. Open since 2022—but the match was played on Monday afternoon thanks to the new schedule, and Sinner appeared to wilt under sickness and heat1 before retiring within the first set. He then dropped out of the U.S. Open mixed doubles tournament beginning the next day.
Tennis is one of the many sports that gaze with envy at F1’s schedule of 24 races, each treated as a marquee event. But to get anything close, the sport would need a similar level of centralized control, or at least increased cooperation of its “seven kingdoms,” not to mention the players, who have amassed new levels of power and are currently suing tennis’ governing bodies for antitrust violations.
“The nearly unanimous opinion of everyone involved in the game — its leaders, its players, tournament organizers, sponsors, media executives, coaches — is that professional tennis is broken,” Matthew Futterman wrote for The Athletic at the end of the 2023 campaign.
There is plenty of positive momentum despite the hurdles. TNT Sports brought new energy to the French Open. The Team Europe vs. Team World Laver Cup is growing. High-level mixed doubles offers an entirely new vein of competition.
And there’s also a chance that the current amount of big-time tennis is simply enough for most fans. Eight weeks, combining all the major championships, is roughly similar to how long playoffs run in America’s biggest sports, Rothenberg pointed out.
But there’s an even bigger chance that we’ll never truly know how big tennis could be. The blame for that can be split seven ways, at least.
P.S. If you do want to follow tennis beyond the grand slam events, including all the internecine drama, make sure you’re subscribed to Ben’s Substack, Bounces.
On the most recent Sporticast episode, Jacob joined Scott and Kurt to talk more tennis, with a look at the sport’s highest individual earners.
We also chatted about whether ESPN’s new ‘Verts’ feed will rot your brain as effectively as TikTok.
Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Club Sportico is a community organized by Sportico, a digital media company launched in 2020 to cover the business side of sports. You can read breaking news, smart analysis, and in-depth features from Eben, Jacob and their colleagues at Sportico.com, and listen to the Sporticast podcast wherever you get your audio. Contact us at club@sportico.com.
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