The Future of Tennis (Does Not Look Good)

Many of us have been following tennis for years and have seen some good changes especially with advance of technology.
Tennis has become a 24/7 little guest in our lives...we can watch matches every day, talk about them, know everything and more about players....


But it is now beginning to feel that the golden moment of tennis has been and gone, that the tour is heading in negative direction.

Destruction, even.

With money pouring into our beloved sport, instead of things becoming better and easier we are now seeing ATP website being hard to follow (I barely visit it these days, there are other much quicker and convenient ones to get to instant scores etc).

Fedal has soared popularity of tennis like never before and as a result we have more global interest, better competitioon, but with it more cut-throat negative side-effects, but that's another story...

Case in point: WTA.
Apparently the organisation is in such trouble with the lack of established rivalries and "stars", everyone is beating everyone in dull matches nobody is interested in.

Who wants to watch robotic bashing tennis produced in various tennis factories where every girl hopes  to be the next Sharapova or Serena?

How many of you know Svitolina, Stricova, Konta, Stephens, Shuang etc etc...they are all the same.

The new WTA boss produced an astounding statement:

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"The attention span of the audience today is shrinking. Everybody wants it in very short nuggets."
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WTA tennis managers now want to get rid of the third set and introduce super TB.


And don't think ATP is safe!


This is what Chris Kermode had to say on the subject:

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“We’re in the best place we’ve ever been. That makes it difficult to argue for change, but we have to anticipate what pitfalls we see in the next 10, 15 years. What about our next generation of fans? We have to ask millennials what appeals to them,  what it will take to get them to watch and attend tennis. "
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I find this way of thinking scary.


Doesn't the product sell itself?
Don't we we buy thing because they are of high quality and give us pleasure using them?


Or is tennis, once the elite sport going down the same capitalistic spiral of pandering to masses, giving them cheap disposable junk like fast food chicken "nuggets"?


Are tennis bosses in panic with Federer, Nadal and even Djokovic leaving tennis in a few years?


I understand there will be a dip in sales after their departure, but that's normal part of economic cycle....even I know that!



You know it's the end times when Nadal is the defender of tennis tradition!!! :


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“The kind of matches that stay on in the memory, and on the history of our sport, are a bit [longer] matches and dramatic matches that become emotional. If you want to change the values of the sport, maybe yes. [But] tennis has values that we need to follow, in my opinion."
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I dread any instant changes made out of panic...they will bring nothing good and not the way forward.


What do you think?


PS
I was prompted to write all this after reading P. Bodo's article:


http://www.tennis.com/pro-game/2016/10/tennis-changes-chris-kermode-peter-bodo-millenials-tennis-scoring/61609/



PPS
sorry about font inconsistency, even c&p isn't as straightforward as it used to be....

Couldn't agree more, but it's everywhere, cricket is being reduced to slogs too.

The problem seems to be a belief that people have shorter attention spans even though they don't really, they're just being judged on that basis.How can we complain kids have short attention span, then moan that they spend too long on gaming?

The genius of tennis is the scoring system; the advantage rule creates tension and intermittent critical moments. Start messing with no-advantage, or super tie breaks, or coming away from 5 sets for Slams (finals of Masters should still be 5 as well in my book) and the whole thing falls apart, imho, as it wouldn't arrest decline and lead only to calls for ever-shorter formats.

The problem is boring, robotic, homogenised tennis. Sort the equipment out.