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Monday, Oct 13, 2008
With Sampras and Agassi aging, men's tennis hopes to excite fans with a fresh crop of young men and a ballsy new ad campaign.
Aug 10, 2000 | Maybe you've seen the ads, the black-and-white photos of chisel-faced tennis players gripping their rackets in gladiator-like poses. But unless you're a serious tennis fan, these athletes -- Gustavo Kuerten, Lleyton Hewitt, Juan Carlos Ferrero and Tommy Haas -- might not register as hot, up-and-coming stars.
Men's tennis desperately needs that to change. The two brightest lights of the game's old guard, Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras, are aging, and so far, no one else on the men's tour has achieved their magnitude of appeal. The problem is particularly worrisome in the United States, where tennis already is overshadowed by other sports, and TV audiences tend to tune in only when big names are smashing serves.
That's why the ATP Tour, which oversees the men's tour, is trying to "celebritize" its next generation of top 10 players with a splashy new ad campaign, fittingly headlined "New balls please."
"Research has shown that the public wants to learn more about the young players, so our goal was to show the strong attitudes of the new blood, and to try to make them slightly godlike -- like gladiators in a duel," says Ailana Kamelmacher, a spokeswoman for Burson Marsteller in London, which created the campaign.
The marketing push comes at a critical time for the ATP Tour -- which last year raked in an estimated $62.5 million from tournament ticket sales, television contracts and sponsorships. That's up from $55 million in 1997. With so much money at stake and a slew of sponsors to please, the tour can't afford to let interest in the men's game slip. Last year, it signed a $1.2 billion deal with ISL Worldwide, granting the Swiss sports marketing firm 10 years of marketing, broadcasting and licensing rights to the ATP Tour, its prestigious Masters Series tournaments and the world championships. And ISL already has attracted impressive international sponsors such as Mercedes Benz, Fila and Newsweek -- all of which are betting men's tennis will lure even more fans in the next few years.
The slogan of the ATP Tour's marketing push may be a tad sensational. (Sampras, for one, sniffed that it's not his "cup of tea.") But the ads now appearing in Newsweek, USA Today, CBS and ESPN already have generated buzz.
At last week's Masters Series tournament in Toronto, hundreds of fans lined up for autographs from tennis's new stars, who were glorified on billboards throughout the city. And during ESPN's coverage of the event, commentators continually talked about the feisty young players making their way up the rankings. "Last night was a major changing of the guard," chimed ESPN commentator MaliVai Washington, referring to 20-year-old Marat Safin's quarterfinal victory over Sampras in three sets. "It shows that these young guns aren't afraid to take on the big guys."
But what happened in Toronto early in the week also reflects the challenges the ATP Tour faces as it unveils its new, high-profile marketing campaign around the world.
Although Safin, a hard-hitting and hunky Russian, claimed the trophy, most of the 11 other players featured in the campaign -- including Kuerten, Ferrero, Hewitt, Magnus Norman, Nicolas Lapentti, Nicolas Kiefer, Mariano Zabaleta, Roger Federer and Mark Philippoussis -- crashed out in early rounds. And aside from Kuerten, who recently won his second French Open, none of these "new balls" has won a Grand Slam tournament, the only events that truly capture the world's attention.
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