Twitter says college tennis has a marketing problem
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 the sport clearly isn’t capturing even the existing tennis fan base, which should be low hanging fruit. From the school’s club tennis team to junior and high school players to recreational players at clubs in the area, college tennis needs to capitalize on the resurgence of tennis post-pandemic and find a way to turn those people into butts in seats at matches. If you want to be on TV, the first step is proving that people actually show up to watch your matches.
I turned to social media to unpack this “college tennis has a marketing problem” hypothesis. While not perfect, I think social media following is a good indication of how well a sport is resonating and engaging with its community. It’s also a great measuring stick for non-revenue sports. If you aren’t generating revenue for the school, are you at least creating engagement online that could result in more donors or eyeballs for streaming?
The answer for tennis is a very resounding no.
Analyzing the SEC's Twitter Data
I was inspired by a thread from SkullSparks about the most followed college athletics programs on social media. In their data, the SEC had four of the top 10 most followed schools, which was more than any other conference. I decided to dive deeper into the data myself and look specifically at how tennis compared to other sports in the SEC on Twitter. The result is disappointing: Tennis is the SEC’s least followed sport on Twitter.
The SEC offers nine men's and twelve women's NCAA sports. Those 21 sports translate into 15 potential twitter accounts for schools (sports like Track & Field and Cross Country use a singular social media account for both genders). When you average across the 14 SEC schools, men’s and women’s tennis comes in 14th and 15th in average number of followers per school.
Not only is tennis the least followed sport on average across all 14 schools, but both men’s and women’s tennis are the two least followed NCAA programs for 9 of the 14 SEC schools. At only 3 of the 27 tennis programs (Georgia men, Miss. State men, and Kentucky men) is tennis not one of the three least followed programs at the school.
Some Winners
In aggregate, the data is pretty depressing. Tennis has a long way to go to expand its reach. Perhaps we can learn some lessons from the schools who seem to be doing a decent job today.
Most SEC Tennis Twitter Followers
All of the other 24 tennis programs rank tennis as one of the 3 least-followed programs at their school.
The question
Twitter followers are a decent, albeit imperfect and lagging, metric to capture the growth of the game relative to other sports. Right now, college tennis is alarmingly behind. In 2022, how can tennis pass sports like Golf, Equestrian, and Swimming? To be clear, I’m not proposing twitter growth hacks. I believe an expanded twitter following will come from grassroots organizing that starts with butts in seats at matches.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on whether or not this info is surprising to you, and if you think tennis should be concerned? Also, please share all of your thoughts on ways to grow the game @JTweetsTennis.
Additional Stats
Comparing conferences
Most Followed Women's Programs
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