I just read criticisms around influencers at the Queens tournament and how they weren’t tennis influencers. I understand the sentiment but when you’re paying these creators to cover a tournament you’re paying for THEIR audience to grow and expose the sport to new people.
At the us open i never hired tennis influencers, the goal was to grow the game and increase exposure for the tournament. Tennis influencers are already covering it and their audience is used to that content so it wouldn’t be reaching new people and would be a ‘waste’ of media $$
I don’t think anything Hard Court has published has resonated quite as widely as Ayan Broomfield speaking about her experience as a Black woman at tennis tournaments—and that says something much bigger about the state of not just tennis, but society more broadly.
The 15% boycott is interesting. Kudos to the players for sticking together and taking a stance. I think the one thing that gets left out of and lost in these conversations is the pay to those who work the tournament and work for the organizations