Data Story - How to Drive Growth in Tennis Participation

Tennis is a beloved, global sport known for its sophistication and tradition. However, tennis is growing at a slower rate in participation and viewership compared to sports like pickleball and basketball. The biggest challenge tennis faces is its brand perception. The general perception of tennis is that it is an inaccessible sport meant for “rich white people.” For our data storytelling class, Ellen Mason and I developed a client presentation analyzing the barriers hindering tennis’ growth and offering actionable strategies to revitalize its brand for a new generation of players and fans.

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About this data story:

U.S. tennis participation data (1).xlsx

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Origin:

The majority of the data presented in this client presentation originates from the U.S. Tennis Participation Report, an overview of tennis participation in the U.S. published annually by the Tennis Industry Association. We also used this report to gather the demographics of the tennis-playing population in the United States. The U.S. Open viewership data originates from the Sports Business Journal. The data gathered on the NBA finals used to compare to the U.S. Open viewership originates from Statista. To compare tennis’ annual growth rate with pickleball, we used pickleball data from Pickleheads. 

Spreadsheet: 

Our first spreadsheet, U.S. tennis participation, contains 18 rows. These rows represent each USTA geographical section of the United States. Our second spreadsheet, U.S. tennis demographics, contains 29 rows. These rows represent the reported demographics of the U.S. tennis-playing population. Our third spreadsheet, U.S. Tennis vs. Basketball Viewership, contains five rows that represent the past four years of U.S. Open and NBA Finals data from 2019 to 2023.  

Our first spreadsheet, U.S. tennis participation, contains six columns. These columns represent the past five years of recorded tennis participation in the U.S. Our second spreadsheet, U.S. tennis demographics, contains three columns. The first two columns represent the proportion each demographic held of the entire U.S. tennis player population in 2022 and 2023. The third column represents the percentage of growth between 2022 and 2023. Our third spreadsheet, U.S. Tennis vs. Basketball Viewership, contains two columns. These columns represent the average viewership of the NBA Finals compared to the U.S. Open throughout the past five years.   

Transformation:

For our first spreadsheet, U.S. tennis participation, we transformed the data that was originally intended in the Tennis Industry Association to show just participation, to focus more on the annual growth in each USTA geographical section. We did so by sorting this spreadsheet from largest annual percentage growth to smallest annual percentage growth. To find the annual percentage growth of U.S. tennis percentage, we averaged the percentages of change from each consecutive year to find the average growth over the past 5 years. We transformed the U.S. tennis demographics spreadsheet by reorganizing the original data which was structured 2023-2022 (left to right) to 2022-2023 (left to right) to emphasize growth. We also added a column that represented the percentage of growth among each demographic proportion from 2022-2023.   

Analysis: 

We analyzed our data by manually calculating the average annual growth in tennis participation from 2019 to 2023 for each USTA geographical section in the United States. This allowed us to analyze which sections were experiencing the most growth, and which have opportunities for further engagement. Additionally, we calculated percent change from 2022 to 2023 of the proportions of tennis players’ demographic data such as gender, race and income. This demographic data allowed us to analyze if tennis is becoming more diverse. Lastly, we analyzed the growth in average viewership of the NBA Finals compared to the U.S. Open by tracking and comparing the annual growth of the two programs. 

Insights developed from data analysis:

• Tennis is becoming increasingly less accessible.

• Tennis viewership is not nearly as popular as other sports in the U.S. 

• Tennis lacks diversity. 

• There is rapid regional growth in the Hawaii Pacific, Pacific Northwest, and Florida USTA sections. 

• There are large markets with growth potential in the Southern and Midwest USTA sections. 

Group responsibilities

• Brynna Burnett: Focused on analyzing demographic trends and synthesizing insights related to regional participation.

• Ellen Mason: Led the creation of visualizations and developed the narrative for the data story, ensuring the insights were compelling and accessible.