Men’s tennis body the Association of Tennis Professionals has built on its aggregation and centralisation of broadcast rights on the ATP World Tour, with 12 tournaments across the 250 category being pooled and sold together in partnership with ATP Media, the organisation’s broadcast arm.
Following the success of the centralisation of rights across the ATP Finals, the nine World Tour Masters 1000s and the 13 World Tour 500 tournaments, which has seen viewership more than double over the past 10 years, the ATP is pursuing a similar strategy with continued aggregation and centralisation at the 250-level.
The 12 tournaments to be included in the World Tour 250 tournament package are: the Chennai Open, the US Men’s Clay Court Championship (Houston), the Hungarian Open (Budapest), the Estoril Open, the Open Parc Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes Lyon, the Antalya Open, the Aegon International (Eastbourne), the Swiss Open Gstaad, the Abierto Mexicano de Tenis Mifel (Los Cabos), the Winston-Salem Open, the Chengdu Open and the European Open (Antwerp).
The rights encompass all forms of international media rights across linear broadcast and digital, across a five-year term from 2017 through 2021.
“Media rights is one of the biggest growth areas in our sport, and we’ve seen tremendous results both commercially and in terms of viewership with the centralisation of rights at Masters 1000 level and ATP World Tour 500 level,” Chris Kermode, ATP executive chairman and president, said.
“We want to see that growth replicated at the 250-level which, as a category, represents the largest number of events on the Tour. We’re delighted to have started this process, with 12 250 tournaments coming on board in this initial phase. We’ll be looking to expand this number further as and when the rights become available in the coming years.”
Viewership of the ATP World Tour stood at 464 million in 2008, prior to the creation and centralisation of the 500 category in 2009. In 2016, viewership reached 938 million viewers, an increase of 102 per cent across a 10-year period.