When Amazon walks away from tennis programming – for now – at the end of 2023, we will probably already know exactly who will replace them. At present though, the future of watching tennis in the UK is very much up in the air as we move into the post-Amazon era.
Amazon insiders describe their sports rights strategy as “opportunistic”, identifying chances to dip their toe in certain markets for a relatively low-cost to gauge what the interest levels might, informing future decisions to commit or withdraw to a certain sport. When Sky dropped the US Open in 2016 after 25 years, Amazon rushed into the vacuum to sign a £30m, five-year deal.
“Sky coalesced around some core properties such as football, cricket and golf,” Conrad Wiacek, head of sports analysis at GlobalData, tells i.
“I think that’s quite interesting because, since Wimbledon is always going to be on the BBC, in essence it left a major without a home.”
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Amazon eventually picked up rights to ATP and WTA events in the UK too, and became practically the home of tennis outside the three non-American grand slams. Tim Henman and Greg Rusedski, by far the most successful male British players of the 21st century before Andy Murray came along, joined up as pundits. The product evolved into a modern, professional sports broadcast.
And their tenure has generally been well-received among viewers. i conducted a straw poll of readers for their feedback on watching on the sport through Amazon and it was overwhelmingly positive.
The ad-free coverage, the opportunity to stream different courts from the ones being shown on main coverage, on-demand tennis and tactical analysis were all mentioned as factors that had impressed viewers of Amazon’s tennis coverage. The concerns were that a new broadcaster would be likely to cut much of that on the grounds of cost – but much of what Amazon were providing was as a result of their presence as a streaming service rather than a more linear TV channel.
But what some tennis figures call “the Amazon effect” was that by taking it off mainstream television, tennis was hidden away from casual channel-hoppers. Even within the Amazon site or app, it was hard to stumble across the tennis coverage: you had to go looking for it, most likely a reflection that giving it greater prominence yielded less click-through than the latest fantasy drama or the ubiquitous Ted Lasso.
“Truth be told outside of Wimbledon tennis is not the most watched sport in the UK. For two weeks a year, we’re tennis experts, we’re all huge tennis fans,” says Wiacek.
“Then the other majors I think you’ve got dedicated tennis fans who watch those, and something like the French Open when it was broadcast on ITV4 might pick up the odd casual viewer.”
Amazon though were relying on the fact that to watch the tennis, you effectively had to walk into their shop and sit on their sofa, surrounded by all of their products at the click of a button. Like almost all sports broadcasters, they were using tennis to try to leverage viewers into becoming customers.
“I think with something like F1 or something like that, you can concentrate that into a couple of hours of interest and it’s the same with a football game, it’s the same with the NFL,” Wiacek adds.
“I think it’s quite telling that they have the Premier League games at Christmas in the UK as well. Traditionally, when we’re all running out to a sale [on Boxing Day], Amazon want you stay at home browsing Amazon, which I don’t think we’re going to do while watching a tennis tournament.
“It’s a week or two weeks, and it’s quite intensive in terms of the level of commitment that you’re asking for from an audience. Again, we can do it for two weeks a year in general terms. But you’ve got to be quite dedicated to be getting up at six in the morning to watch the Australian Open find all and potentially up past midnight watch the US Open final.”
The other problem for Amazon is that while Raducanu’s miraculous run at the US Open 14 months ago was fortuitous from their perspective, they arrived in the sport five years ago, just as Murray was starting his long and painful journey through hip surgery, and while Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal were also starting to battle injury in the later years of their career.
Wiacek, who previously worked for Kantar Media on behalf of federations and rights holders evaluating the value of media rights, says: “A lot of it is dependent, especially in tennis, on the strength of the Brits: Andy Murray is now at the very tail end of his career, Emma Raducanu hasn’t really replicated sort of run that she did in the US Open that she did last year since. That’s not saying she won’t but she hasn’t done it yet.
“There’s not really another Brit out there that is commanding that level of interest.”
Sky have emerged as the early frontrunner to take over from Amazon, although movement in other parts of the market suggest there could be competition. BT Sport has been merged with Eurosport under the aegis of Warner Bros Discovery, a mammoth group with enough financial clout to challenge Sky on all levels. Eurosport have an existing tennis audience and the owners could be tempted to make it “the home of tennis” in the UK, barring Wimbledon’s free-to-air presence.
But either broadcaster might also be tempted to do a hybrid deal to bring some of their coverage to more eyeballs on terrestrial and free streaming TV. i understands that broadcasters have been encouraged by the increased impact of deals such as Sky Sports and Channel 4’s rights share, where the British Grand Prix is broadcast on both networks as well as weekly extended highlights on terrestrial. Premiership Rugby also now have one live game a week on ITV, while all other televised matches remain on BT Sport. Tennis though, remains a bit of a tough sell.
However, there could be a major change in wind direction coming. Next year, the first instalment of a Netflix docuseries in the mould of the wildly successful Drive to Survive will be released, with production have spent most of 2022 following a variety of players around the world.
“The fact that there’s no team element in tennis that makes it a little bit trickier as well because ultimately, you see what happens on the court, but there’s a whole industry and support network behind the scenes,” Wiacek says.
“Having that ancillary [Netflix] programming to help tell some of the stories I think can only benefit tennis and I think will help in sort of changing or driving interest towards getting those casual viewers engaged.”
