Alongside the multibillion-pound battle for Premier League TV rights, tennis has emerged as another key offering in the broadcasters’ scrap for subscribers for one simple reason: unlike every other sporting audience in the UK, the majority of those watching are women.
Sky Sports has been showing live tennis for about 12 hours each day from the US Open for the last fortnight, the midpoint of a five‑year deal that began in 2023 and that signalled its return to a sport it had in effect abandoned six years previously. Preliminary talks with the United States Tennis Association over a new contract are expected to take place after the conclusion of the championships in New York, with Sky eager to extend.
Beyond the US Open, Sky signed a five-year deal for exclusive rights for all ATP and WTA Tour events last year, with the managing director, Jonathan Licht, revealing such investments are part of a deliberate attempt to attract more female viewers to a network that remains largely the televisual sanctuary of middle-aged men.
“We’ve been investing in sports that resonate with women, like tennis, where 58% of viewers are female,” Licht says. “By creating content that speaks to women, we’ve increased our share of total TV viewing in the home by 27% among women over the past five years. We’re on track to have more women watch Sky this year than ever before.”
Sky’s move into tennis represents a major U-turn. When the broadcaster launched individual sport channels in 2017 it was not part of its portfolio, with Amazon Prime subsequently picking up the US Open and both tours on the cheap.
The results of Sky’s new strategy have been spectacular, with its overall tennis audience growing 30% year-on-year, while the 58% female viewership referenced by Licht is also increasing, up from 53% last year. “No sport comes close to tennis in terms of female viewership,” says Yath Gangakumaran, Sky Sports’ executive director of commercial.
Sky Sports’ overall audience is 31% female this year, with the contrast between tennis and women’s football particularly stark. An average Premier League game attracts 30% female viewers, which drops to 27% for an EFL fixture, while the picture is little different for the Women’s Super League, whose audiences are 34% female.
The overrepresentation of women amongst tennis audiences is consistent across broadcasters, with the BBC’s live coverage of Wimbledon and Queen’s this year attracting a 58% female audience, in contrast to 44% for the women’s European Championship (it was 45% for ITV, with whom they shared live rights.)
“Sport has historically been the preserve of men, really, in terms of viewing,” says Gangakumaran. “When it comes to the really big national events you’ll have families who’ll sit and watch, so it skews a bit closer to about 40%. But typically you’re looking at between the 20% and 30% mark for female viewers. Men are generally a bit more interested, and will give up their time to go and watch sport, which suggests a deeper affinity. Or perhaps they just have more time to spare.
“Fingers crossed this changes over the next generation. We’re getting away from gender stereotypes and there are clearly more people wanting to have their girls play sport. You’d hope that in the years to come we get closer to 50/50, but I think it’s going to take quite a while before we get there.
“Our viewing by women is the highest proportion we’ve ever had in Sky Sports’ 35-year history, and tennis is playing a big part in that. Formula One is becoming more female as well, and is above the Sky Sports average, but nowhere near what is happening in tennis.”
TNT Sports is also seeking to capitalise on what appears to be a clear trend, having inherited the French Open from its sister company, Eurosport, last year. Its parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, has since agreed a new five-year deal for exclusive rights for Roland Garros in Europe until 2030. TNT’s audience for this year’s French Open was 55% female, broadly in line with Sky’s figures, a key reason it has also opted to extend its contract for the Australian Open until 2031.
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The French Open extension was immediately vindicated, with TNT achieving record viewing figures in the UK of more than one million for the Carlos Alcaraz-Jannik Sinner final on the day the new contract was announced in June. The Spaniard’s thrilling comeback even attracted a bigger audience than Andy Murray’s defeat by Novak Djokovic in Paris in 2016.
While such high viewing figures, which compare to those of an average Saturday Premier League game, are rare, tennis is delivering significant audiences of hundreds of thousands for Sky on a daily basis. The deals with the men’s Association of Tennis Professionals and the Women’s Tennis Association cover 80 tournaments and more than 4,000 matches each year, a huge amount of content and armchair hours for viewers.
While the production costs are significant, the investment has been deemed worthwhile, with Sky particularly pleased with data which shows that its female audience as a share of the total TV audience has increased by 50% in four years.
“Tennis offers live sport every day,” Gangakumaran says. “If you think about Formula One, which is obviously one of our biggest sports, there are 24 races each year out of the 52 weekends. There’s nothing happening midweek. Cricket is obviously great for us in the summer, but there’s nothing happening in October with our England deal.
“We show tennis almost every day of the week. As a viewer, you know that even if it’s 11am on a Tuesday morning, there’s likely to be some live tennis on. And it’s an 11-month-a-year sport. The really exciting thing is that while women are already providing more than half of our audience, the share is still growing, which is great.”
