The Women’s Tennis Association has reported significant increases in broadcast coverage and viewership for its 2015 season as it looks forward to the start of its new deal with digital sports media company Perform.
According to a report compiled by the SMG Insight agency, the 2015 WTA season saw overall viewership rise by 25 per cent year-on-year, with 395 million cumulative viewers in 2015 versus 316 million in 2014. This is the second consecutive year that the WTA has seen a substantial increase in audience as broadcast viewership rose by 23 per cent in 2014.
Digital viewership for the 2015 season was up 44 per cent year-on-year, with 44.6 million viewers watching women’s tennis through online broadcast platforms in 2015, compared to 31 million in 2014. The figures are generated from the cumulative audience for live, delayed and highlights coverage on WTA broadcast partner platforms across 2015’s 21 WTA Premier events and the WTA Finals in Singapore.
The report stated the two most-viewed tournaments of the 2015 season were held in Asia, with tournaments in the US and Canada completing the top five. The China Open in Beijing, won by Spain’s Garbiñe Muguruza, drew a global viewership of 34.64 million, while the season-ending WTA Finals – where Poland's Agnieszka Radwanska (pictured) won her biggest career title to date – drew 32.49 million.
The top five tournaments according to global broadcast viewership in 2015 were completed by Toronto’s Rogers Cup (29.70 million), the Miami Open (29.37 million) and the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells (26.81 million).
The report stated 2015 broadcast viewership growth was matched by increases across the WTA’s own media platforms, with the number of unique users and number of overall visits to the official WTA website up 14 per cent year-on-year and 15 per cent year-on-year, respectively. The number of views of video content across the official WTA website and WTA social media pages hit 48 million in 2015.
The WTA said several reasons contribute to the all-time peak of interest in women’s tennis. WTA coverage is being seen by more television viewers, with the number of households reached by WTA programming hitting 954.4 million in 2015, a 38 per cent increase on 2014. The WTA also stressed that the greater number of ways fans can consume WTA content is adding viewers who consume sport online, or are looking to supplement television coverage with extra content online.
In December 2014, Perform struck a long-term media rights and production deal with the WTA that was hailed by the tour operator as the largest such agreement in the history of women’s sport. The deal is worth $525m (€484.3m) over 10 years, from 2017 to 2026.
From 2017, WTA Media will produce over 2,000 singles matches a year and increase news content by 40 per cent. By increasing the amount of content available to fans, the WTA said it can expect the strong rise in media engagement reported in 2015 to continue to rise in the future.
Steve Simon, chief executive of the WTA, said: “The continued rise in audiences show the WTA strategy to grow the product and reach more fans is working, and the number of stars coming up through the sport will continue to excite interest. The depth of the playing field in our sport is unprecedented right now, and the competition is outstanding. We have the platform to continue growth in the future.”