Get The French Off Tennis Channel

How many of you have gotten your fill of the French Open over the last two weeks? How many of you were able to find it on your television from round 1 to now? If you did, you're one of the lucky ones.  This year Tennis Channel was the network that won the bid for television rights for the majority of the tournament, where in the past ESPN 2 and NBC televised the majority of the coverage, with Tennis Channel showing a few early round matches, rewind being relegated to replaying matches televised earlier by the other networks.

I for one, was unable to view any of the French Open, unlike in previous years.  Tennis Channel, as many of you know, is considered a premium channel by both cable and satellite television providers, thusly, it costs significantly more per month to have access to the channel over basic tv packages.  I am venturing merely an educated guess, but it is my assumption that the majority of cable or direct tv subscribers do not have tennis channel.

My fear for the game is that if the grand slams continue to allow Tennis Channel to win the bidding for the events, the events, and by extension, the sport, will regress and recess into mediocrity, ala the NHL.  You simply cannot survive and grow as a sport when your major events are not televised on a major network (cbs, nbc, abc, or ESPN, ESpN 2).  Your events leave the public consciousness.  Die hards will always find a way to watch, it is the average fan, the casual fan, the type of people you want to attract to take up the sport - new customers - that will now never watch your events.  Logically this means less and less participation, as you aren't gaining enough new viewers to make up for general attrition due to death, or for those that leave the sport for other reasons.

Those in charge of awarding television rights for the majors, in my opinion, should not simply award it to the highest bidder. When the highest bidder is a niche network that the majority of tennis fans don't get, you've made a serious miscalculation in your marketing of your sport or event.  Perhaps awarding it to a lower bidder with more mass appeal, and more importantly, more ACCESS, would help further grow the sport.  If the Masters golf tournament, US Open golf tournament, British Open, and PGA championships can see that keeping their majors on major networks is smart, even when they have a niche channel as a provider (Golf channel), one would think The Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, and US open tennis slams would heed the wisdom of their marketing plan.

I realize the French Open in this case simply took the biggest check, and perhaps Tennis channel promised more hours of coverage overall than other bidders.  But the fact that a vast majority of people, tennis players or not, don't get the channel, those hours of coverage become wasted hours, with no real return.  Long term, it will hurt the sport, the tournament, and in the end everyone's pocketbooks.