Declining Attendance Threatens
Small Tournaments
Matt Cronin
Outside of the US Open and the highly successful Masters Series tournaments at Indian Wells, Miami and Cincinnati, there are almost no events making money in the US. There are numerous reasons: big sponsors are hard to come by; TV networks either will not pay or pay very little for rights; and attendance has steadily declined across the board.
If pro tennis were extreme healthy in the US, tournaments in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Jose would not have recently gone abroad. The ATP tournament in Atlanta wouldn’t be debating its existence annually. And the same group that sold the San Jose event to Brazil would not be discussing selling its Memphis tournament as well.
At the 2013 New Haven Open--played a week before the US Open--tournament organizers actually decided to reduce the number of seats available for purchase. The year before only 4,840 showed up for the final. That was less than half the spectators who saw the Venus Williams and Jennifer Capriati final 11 years before.
A total of bout 46,000 fans attended the 2013 New Haven tournament overall, down over 10 percent from 53,000 in 2012. Surprisingly the organizers were actually pleased. This was because many of those 2012 tickets were given away.
But the USTA, which owned the event, was not pleased. New Haven had actually been losing a couple hundred thousand per year over the past five years. So the USTA tried to sell it to the owner of the Winston-Salem ATP event, which wanted to turn it into a combined tournament. But the ATP Board of Directors turned that proposal down.
New Haven tournament director Anne Worcester then convinced the State of Connecticut to buy it for the heavily discounted price of $618,000, far less than it could have fetched on the international market. Some believe that if the tournament sanction had been shopped around Asia, it could have a commanded a $5 million price tag. But the USTA wanted to keep the event in the United States so it was willing to sell it at a small price.
Worcester has been involved in the sport for a long time, having once served a stint as the WTA CEO. She believes that her event can be successful in the future, but does not paint a rosy picture when it comes to attendance.
"It’s the new normal," she said about reducing seat capacity. "The biggest change is that all live sports entertainment events are challenged with getting people off the couch. There are so many different choices for the consumer."
Tennis is not the only sport facing declining attendance. A Yahoo Sports study stated that attendance is falling in just about every sport, including baseball, college football and even the wildly popular NFL.
Lee Igel, a professor of sports management at New York University cited ticket pricing as the biggest issue, as well as added costs such as transportation, parking, food and drink.
"It’s really sort of a classic business problem of having enormous success and thinking it will continue and always work," Igel said. "The customer is getting the same, but paying more. They don’t get it: ‘Why should I go? What’s in it for me?’"
Ticket prices at smaller tennis tournament are not high though, especially during the weekdays when events are trying to get anyone through the gates. But they are struggling to do so. At three WTA-only events I covered this summer--Stanford, San Diego and Toronto—all featuring most of the game’s stars, I saw only five days out of 21 where the stands appeared fairly full. And none of them were sold out.
The biggest problem that live events face is the improvement in television technology, as well as many more matches now being shown on the internet. Twenty years ago, even 10 years ago, tennis fans were unable to watch early round matches from tournaments, and if they lived locally and wanted to see matches, they had to go buy tickets.
Now they can sit in front of their 60-inch HDTV and watch a very clear picture without having to contend with traffic, weather and high priced food. With the existence of online services like TennisTV.com, they can gaze at their souped-up laptops and watch HD feeds from the office, the comfort of their own bedrooms, or anywhere.
The positive news for US tennis is that in general, the TV audiences are up (ratings for the US Open did climb this year). But while the Grand Slams are in great financial shape and are constantly packed, what the smaller tournaments have yet to figure out is to how to translate TV coverage into more dollars.
Some smaller tournaments actually pay broadcasters to show their events and then have to go out and sell their own advertising. Other are paid a pittance for broadcast rights.
Unless tournaments figure out new and inventive ways to get people through their doors, and/or cut some broadcast deals that make them more profitable, they might be forced to go the way of New Haven – asking for a government bailout.
Or sell overseas. While Connecticut might see a substantial economic impact by hosting a tournament, other states may not. For the near future, some tournaments are holding on for dear life.
