Welcome to the second of a series of ATP Podcast specials. This week presenter Chris Bowers looks at the development of tennis away from the court, from its global appeal, to the various innovations and its ambition to reach new audiences on new platforms. To help us along this journey we’re joined by tennis glitterati including Cedric Pioline, Nick Kyrgios, Paul Haarhuis, Brad Stine, Ivan Ljubicic and many more. Headlines are...
PAUL HAARHUIS ON THE WORLDWIDE NATURE OF THE SPORT - ’Tennis is doing really well internationally, worldwide. If you look at the amount of countries that play it, it’s the second biggest sport in the world when it comes to viewer average and viewer interest in the game, so that means you’re heading in the right direction’.
CEDRIC PIOLINE ON INNOVATIONS AT THE ROLEX PARIS MASTERS - ’There are several things like here we have an entrance show with tunnel lights and music and the music is the decision of the fans through the app. They choose which music they would like along with the colours, so I think it’s very interesting and very interactive’.
NICK KYRGIOS ON ENTERTAINMENT - ‘You look at the NBA side of things, when people arrive to the stadium, arrive to practice, what they leave in. It kind of gives the fans an idea of what type of personality they are and you can kind of relate to those players a lot more than you can do with tennis players’.
IVAN LJUBICIC ON DIFFERENT FORMATS - ‘I’m a huge chess fan and chess over the last five to ten years has become popular because they introduced faster speed moves, different formats and why this is interesting is that it has shown that you can introduce the faster formats without damaging the classic ones’.
BRAD STINE ON COURT SIZE AND RACQUETS - ’The court doesn’t change and the physics of what you can do is limiting, so if there are any changes, again it goes back to the racquets and the racquet technology’.