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James Berger-North's avatar

Great read, thanks. I consume a lot of sports journalism and often think that tennis lacks these sort of long form, analytical pieces compared to lots of other sports like football, cricket, golf. Tend to just get a lot of match reports, and predictions.

Completely agree when it comes to video games. I love watching a variety of sports, playing them and playing video games. I used to play Virtua Tennis loads on the PSP. But it has always annoyed me that tennis hasn't had a good video game for a whole console generation, and longer (Can add golf to that too). During lockdown I have continued my consumption of F1 through the virtual gps, and got to know the drivers better as they all live stream on Twitch, and have kept this up in between races too. It has felt like great marketing for F1 throughout and also been nice to get to see more of their personalities.

F1, like Football, also has a huge youtube presence with lots of popular accounts related to the F1 game or other motorsport games, which have also been really popular during lockdown and help to drive interest. Some of these guys featured in the virtual gps, one of them commentated, and they regularly interact with the official F1 account and the Codemaster's account on social media. It feels like the various elements are all in sync working together to market the sport and drive interest. Even something like them just releasing driver ratings for next year's game has seen huge fan engagement and debate online, similar to FIFA's ultimate team.

In addition, F1 (since Bernie Ecclestone left) has a fantastic youtube acount which updates regularly with various top 10 videos during the season, and unseen camera angles etc post races. They have lots of interviews with past drivers, and during lockdown have uploaded full classic races at a set time so people can watchalong together and comment. They also always have content for key anniversaries, and do a great job of having lots of old clips to educate fans, and celebrate the legends.

They have also set up an official F1TV website where more hardcore fans can subscribe to watch all the races, have access to every race stretching back to the 80s, as well as some documentaries.

In summary, completely agree there is so much more tennis can do to engage fans, and bring new ones in and what F1 has done in the last few years in particular is a great example of what is possible.

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v ABHI's avatar

Man I have missed your articles and this reminded me why. Excellent analysis.

One point you made about tournaments being widely accessible to everyone around the globe is I think only true to a degree.

There was I think only one 250 tournament and only one challenger in the whole of Africa last year. Countries like India do have a tournament but it's a 250 where not many recognizable stars come. It's clear that the organizations are gravitating more towards big-money markets like China and Singapore which is fair enough but it does make it harder for people in those other countries to get interested in tennis especially when as you say there are so many different competitors.

Tennis, also I think starts out with a disadvantage. Football you can just take a ball and play, same with basketball. Chess and cricket also don't cost too much. Tennis on the other hand does require rackets and a court, leading to it being considered a elitist sport, though maybe not on the level of golf. Again here comes the point of accessibility. I've heard of people "just going out for a hit" in the USA and other western countries but that is simply not possible in less developed countries like it is in those above mentioned sports.

Anyway, I don't know if I have contributed anything to the above topic but these are just some of the thoughts that came to my head while reading your (once again excellent) article.

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