No-Ad, No Problem

Does college tennis have a marketing problem? According to twitter, yes.  Product vs. Marketing This fall, Alex Gruskin of Cracked Racquets has been on a mission to interview every Power 5 men’s and women’s tennis head coach. You can follow that incredibly ambitious and enlightening effort here . In the series, you’ll hear Gruskin explore many innovative – and some crazy! – format changes with the coaches as he looks for ways to bring more excitement and fan attention to the sport.  The question behind the conversation is really: “How do we grow the game of college tennis?” For me, it comes down to two components: Product: Is the format exciting for fans? Marketing: Is the product being marketed in the appropriate channels?   I’d posit that the college tennis product is great but it's is especially weak right now on marketing. Yes, the product has inherent challenges, like confusing scoring and multiple courts of action which make it difficult for the average fan to follow, but th

After a prolonged period of tournament cancellations across levels in 2020, we started to see tournaments return to the calendar in 2021, particularly towards the back half of the year. Notable in that resurgence were the 18 pro tournaments hosted on college campuses from September through December 2021. For comparison purposes, 14 of those were ITF tournaments which is only 4 less than there were in 2019 -- not bad during a pandemic and without the financial backing of the Oracle Pro Series. The 2021 revival of pro events resulted in an uptick of current college players competing on the pro circuit. Because of that, I started to track the success of current college players competing in the US pro events this fall.  This data includes all men’s and women’s main draw singles matches at an ITF or ATP Challenger tournament hosted in the US from September through December 2021.  Players had to be on a current college roster or be a known January admit to be eligible. I collected all of thi