The Super Bowl took place two nights ago and drew over 111 million viewers in the US alone. As I was jamming my face with a variety of chips, dips, cookies and anything else remotely edible, I started to think, could professional tennis ever have its version of a Super Bowl?
And I say, why not? Tennis isn’t nearly as popular in one specific country as Football is in the US, but it does hold some serious popularity weight on a global scale. Obviously this makes things more challenging as it would be tough to plan one huge tennis event around so many time zones. Buttttt, we have seen the World Cup succeed with this, so I don’t think it’s a deal breaker. As far as advertising goes, it would be difficult for ads to be meaningful for so many different cultures but that might make the ads themselves much more interesting and fun to watch. There are definitely enough truly global companies that could take this as an opportunity to tell the whole world to buy their products. Thinking about it a little bit more, I would love to see how Nike and Mercedes would generally advertise to the entire world.
One thing that makes the Super Bowl so awesome is that it is the culmination of weeks of pain and suffering. This one game is the definitive end and whoever comes out on top is considered the best in the world (Sorry rest of the world, if you win in the US apparently by default that makes you the best). So where's the end in tennis?
Tennis is a bit tricky as there really isn’t a great end to the season. Sure, there’s the year ending championship, but it seems like few people have access to watching it and even fewer actually care. So here's what we do - tennis needs some sort of playoffs and I think it should be done in a several week format. Let’s say, the playoffs are the final four weeks. The top 16 players are seeded accordingly and the higher seed has home court advantage. The lower seed has to fly to their country and play on a court/location of their choosing. The final match would be played on a neutral court, somewhere like Dubai where the event would be over the top just like the Super Bowl.
If done correctly, I think the Super Tennis Bowl could be an epic event that would slap the world across the face and say "hey, watch me!". And if we're lucky, we might even get to see the black eyed peas do some weird tronny like song and dance in between each set... think about that.
Disagree. They can never turn a nothing event into a spectacal like that. However, I feel like the US open with its new york/rockstar/american vibe could be molded into more of a world spectacle.
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