How can tennis become more popular?

[onehandbh]

At the college level, there seems to be a trend of colleges/universities cutting funding or cutting their tennis programs altogether.
Are there any colleges that have a tennis program that generates enough revenue to sustain their program?
Anything that tennis can learn from college basketball/football/baseball ?

How popular is tennis in your area as a sport for middle school and high school kids? Compared to basketball, baseball, (football), American football, etc?

At high schools, it seems many kids go to watch the football and basketball games. How about tennis?

Ideas on how to make it more popular?

 

[movdqa]

Colleges are losing students, because the US birthrate has been falling since 1990. Colleges in my region have been cutting costs generally.

 

[ollinger]

Tennis is almost never a popular spectator event at any school level, and college tennis programs pretty much always lose money. As the costs of college are increasing at an alarming rate, it becomes harder and harder to defend such an expenditure, and that's why you're seeing more and more colleges dumping their programs. I doubt there's much that could be done to change this.

 

[Azure]

Its expensive. That is the main problem. Unless the costs are cut down, you will not have the same pull. Charismatic players are good to have but its just a temporary solution.

 

[TheSlicer]

Here in spain, if you have a bunch of money you can pay for your son to travel to first national tournaments and then around Europe, of course to give him more chances you would have to pay for a coach to be with him/her, if the child is a choosen one he might find a sponsor to pay for some things like raquets or such, all this of course besides paying a lot of money for lessons from age 4 onwards, normally if at 18 19 they havent earned an ATP point families either stop investing, or if they have money to spare keep investing to see if something happens, for non aspiring pros, the common thing is to join a tennis club, which are quite expensive and something a working family here couldnt afford just for his son to have a hobby, so unfortunatly here, its still a quite elitist sport, either you are carlos alcaraz or you are rich, about ideas to make it more popular, well we could do like in U.S: having public courts, that thing doesnt exist here, courts are always private, either at clubs or at beach complexes, these last ones are usually in very bad state because they dont see the point in investing in them when maybe only 2 people in 10 building knows how to hold a racquet

 

[Mike Bulgakov]

Tennis was much more popular in the 1980s when I played in high school, and occasionally a handful of girls from our classes and tennis parents/private coaches would come out to watch, but that was pretty much it. The exception was when we played teams with guys with decent 16s or 18s rankings (NorCal and/or national), who sometimes came with a small entourage, or drew small crowds in regionals. It was annoying to get more people watching when I was unlikely to win a set and might get smoked. The last high school matches I saw was La Jolla H.S. playing a top regional team about ten years ago, and maybe a dozen people were watching.

The Bay Club Gateway in S.F. has great courts, but rarely are even a quarter of the courts being used. It's pretty easy to get a public court for free in the Bay Area, L.A., and San Diego, many of them nicely maintained. California is great for players of all levels as long as you like hard courts.

Stanford draws pretty good crowds and is a perennial top tennis school, but the men and women's programs still take a loss in the athletic budget.

https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/stanford-university/student-life/sports/#:~:text=The%20women%27s%20tennis%20program%20at,the%20tune%20of%20%24-913%2C756.

 

[BenC]

It's pretty easy to get a public court for free in ... L.A.

hm ... not so much

many of them nicely maintained.

yeah, not this either.

 

[Mike Bulgakov]

It's been over a decade, but I had good luck in Brentwood and Pacific Palisades.

 

[BenC]

Could just be my area. There's 11 free courts within walking distance and more within a few minutes of driving but unless it's very early/cold/hot there are people camped out waiting for them. Some are comically aggressive in forcing others off the court when they feel like their time is up (walking on mid-rally and putting their stuff on the baseline) and I've seen fights break out too.

The nets get pretty busted from all the use as well.

 

[Crocodile]

I think topics like this needs more research and discussion.
I have always been a supporter of tennis and building tennis communities and culture and I would imagine that each country, state , region, city and district and suburb would have an interesting take on the subject.
To be honest I don’t see enough activity on these forums of people wanting to discuss topics about this.
If you are on this forum because tennis is your favourite thing then we need to have a look at what’s going on and have a conversation and share ideas.

 

[movdqa]

I think topics like this needs more research and discussion.
I have always been a supporter of tennis and building tennis communities and culture and I would imagine that each country, state , region, city and district and suburb would have an interesting take on the subject.
To be honest I don’t see enough activity on these forums of people wanting to discuss topics about this.
If you are on this forum because tennis is your favourite thing then we need to have a look at what’s going on and have a conversation and share ideas.

Our indoor courts are booked solid from 4 - closing during the indoor season.

I think that tennis is doing fine and there are times when I wish that the courts weren't so busy.

 

[vokazu]

I've just been to Hobart where the Domain Tennis Centre was so busy. After a WTA tournament there was an ITF World Tennis Masters Tour MT1000 tournament and Senior Championships tournament. Luckily one or two courts were available in the early mornings for me to play on.

 

[Crocodile]

I’m hoping that the new generation of younger players coming through on both men’s and women’s game will inspire and convert people to engage with the game of tennis.

 

[Bartelby]

Tennis and golf take up too much real estate, and they are both technical games and costly to learn. They are destined for niche sport status.

 

[LuckyR]

At the college level, there seems to be a trend of colleges/universities cutting funding or cutting their tennis programs altogether.
Are there any colleges that have a tennis program that generates enough revenue to sustain their program?
Anything that tennis can learn from college basketball/football/baseball ?

How popular is tennis in your area as a sport for middle school and high school kids? Compared to basketball, baseball, (football), American football, etc?

At high schools, it seems many kids go to watch the football and basketball games. How about tennis?

Ideas on how to make it more popular?

Sounds like you're referring to popularity of participation (not spectating). In that case, tennis is of moderate popularity among children, but very popular among adults. Way more popular than football and baseball. Similar to softball (in the summer, more than softball over a year) and basketball (less than golf in the summer, similar all year).

 

[Crocodile]

Definitely in the 80’s I got the impression that tennis community participation was much higher than now and the structure of general living was more defined.
So what I mean by that is that in many cities and country towns in Australia for example people worked Monday to Friday at set times (9 to 5 or 9 to 3), more women were stay at home mums, shopping for your groceries was either Thursday Night or Saturday morning till 12pm and then retail shut down and people did family things for the rest of the weekend.
Meanwhile tennis clubs and associations had firm ownership of competition structures. These were your choices:
1. Saturday morning juniors 8am to 11.30am
2. Saturday afternoon adult comp
3. Tuesday night mixed and Thursday Night men’s
4. Thursday ladies mid week
5. Annual district championships usually around September
6. Tournaments at school holidays and public holidays
If you joined a club and took up tennis in most places, you knew what it meant and what options you had
7. The back yard court was a community pastime where all the neighbours in your street and beyond could come down a have a hit. Coaches would set up their services in many of these private courts and families including your grand parents, parents, aunts, uncles, children and grandchildren, the family doctor, ministers and local school teachers and others would congregate, bring food, talk about their week and even get together and discuss the books they are reading,
8. The tennis pros were more relatable to the local community especially from the 1960’s, 70’s and 80,s - yes they were household names but there was a more domestic feel to it.
I think, just my personal view, is we have gone away from this type of living and really stuffed things up for ourselves.
1. The working week is no longer defined, both parents are working full time and on weekends.
2. Through our actions we have made housing much more expensive
3. People have become less social in a person to person contact basis - burying our faces into our smart phones
4. The backyard court is now a litigation and insurance risk - fall over on the clay court because one of the lines was slightly raised and you get sued - rather than I should have been more careful
5. We have badly planned our cities trying to discourage country life and coerce people to live in shoe boxes and pay millions for it
6. Tennis organisations have diluted their culture - you don’t have designated structures in playing tennis. People will say that they don’t want to play comp on Saturday afternoon because they either have to work or they want to have a casual hit at 8pm on Sunday evening and that eventually falls apart.
I could go on but I will stop here - but this is what I think has happened to tennis. Whether Pickleball will have better ideas in organising their game - we will have to see.