When a player isn't a player

The headline figure announced by the ITF is that tennis is growing at a rapid rate across the globe with 20m more players in 2024 than in 2019

These numbers are impressive and we wouldn’t want to dismiss them as meaningless but when oyu delve deeper into the metrics you’ll find that those headline numbers come from tennis players who are playing the sport at least once a year.

Yes you read it right. Once a year! So here’s a question for you. If you played a sport once a year would you consider yourself a participant in that sport?

I play golf once a year. It’s a historic event as me and my friends dust the cobwebs off our 1980’s sets of clubs, try and find a course that will allow some complete hackers to ruin their fairways and then spend the next 4 hours searching for balls in the rough. None of us have ever had a golf lesson or been members of a golf club and nor do we intend to. The last time any of us bought any new equipment was at least 20 years ago and I don’t think we follow golf on television or in the news. So should the international golf administration be counting us in their tally of annual golf participants? They probably do as it makes them look better and secure more funding and sponsorship

The 100m tennis players the ITF have announced contains a very large number of ‘once a year’ players.

Here’s the email I received from the British Lawn Tennis Association…

“Data from the ITF shows Great Britain is at the forefront of this global rise in participation and has the highest percentage of population playing tennis of any of the 199 nations who contributed to the ITF report.

“Over the 5-year period from 2019-2023 LTA data showed adult annual participation (adults playing at least once a year) in Britain grew by 44% to around 5.6m people (10% of the population), with children’s annual participation growing to 3,6m, some 40% of the population, over the same period.“

What’s the value to the tennis industry in announcing that 10% of Brits are tennis players when there are clubs closing all the time and no new tennis indoor tennis courts have been built ion the UK for over 5 years?

Scott Lloyd, LTA Chief Executive has said:

“We’ve worked very hard over the past few years to make tennis accessible to play. This includes introducing simple digital tools to allow people to find and book a local court easily, find coaches, and meet people of a similar level to play against, as well as supporting clubs to open their doors to their local community on a pay and play basis.

“Alongside the UK Government we are rolling out a huge refurbishment programme of over 3,000 park tennis courts across 1,000 park sites in Britain, as we know parks are often the first place that people pick up a racket to play. “

Racket Business would love to see real figures on active participants using metrics that really mean something. Why?

• It would help those involved in the industry to understand the potential of their market. Racket sports companies could then create realistic plans based on the size of their potential customer base. If every company used the published figures to estimate their potential customer base they’d have some very disappointed investors when they missed their targets by 90%

• It would five those working in racket sports a proper picture of how their efforts to engage with existing players and grow the number of new players is going thereby enabling to alter their strategy accordingly. If you believe the ITF, tennis is booming so much that we’re all doing the right things and can take it easy. Well i’m afraid that just isn’t the case