* faints * they're even updating each news article with results.

Good god - at this rate they will put us out of a job!

The LTA are getting better recently, and even though they're making mistakes, they are fewer than before, and actually reporting the results of futures on the website is a start, and gives fans a chance to find out where the british players are playing each week.

I think what they need to do is try and get the BBC to cover the challengers/futures in the UK more, and maybe actually have a report each today on the action, as well as a brief article on all the players playing challengers and their results (and if anyone from the BBC is reading this, I'm happy for you to copy anything posted on Britishtennis.net if it means the players get coverage)

And then there is the livescore issue, but we'll set that as the dream for next year

That's impressive. Will be a lot of work for one person to update it on a daily basis so I'll be interested to see how long they keep it up. I'm not sure offering livescore on GB Futures etc. would be worth their while given the effort it would take and the few people who'd follow it.

Not necessarily with Futures, but thousands of people would follow Challengers if they had LS and gave it proper publicity. You just need to look at the number of people who viewed our site during Surbiton.


And why not do it for the Futures, Roehampton and Teen Tennis, too? The LTA certainly have the money for that and it can only help the progress of tennis in Britain.


A huge problem is that the LTA totally lack marketing skills. If they would give proper publicity people would easily flock to the Challengers. In many countries people actually go and buy tickets at some Futures...

Take the women's game. There's a 75K in the autumn of this year and that'll probably have a great field. Now if they would publicise it from next month and keep tickets at something very basic (like three or four pounds), I'm sure that many would jump at the chance of seeing top 150 players (and maybe Robson!) in their city. With the initial publicity, they could easily get proper sponsors in a year or two and it could be a big part of the British tennis calender (like the now defunct Surbiton Challenger) in three years of time - something that could get them profits, instead of losses or rare break evens at the Futures and Challengers.
But it won't happen. It'll be a top secret event at a top secret location that'll be attended by six or seven nerds. And the LTA will grumble that they can't have LS because no one cares...

-- Edited by Greenleaf at 11:17, 2008-07-09

I told you they wouldn't put us out of a 'job' until they start having someone doing updates at evenings or weekends! I don't know why it's so hard - it's not as if they'd have to do it from the office, someone could just log on for a couple of hours from home and do the updates from there.

You'd think the LTA would have someone on their staff who was keen enough on tennis to do that, and even if not for free, for a few extra quid or a few hours off during thw week in lieu.

If they can't manage that, they could always be really imaginative and ask us if we'd mind doing it with a very limited logon, it's not as if they're looking for detailed match reports in that section ...

It's always been this way from the LTA, and the website is updated until the weekend, and then goes untouched until Monday morning, so the conclusion has to be no-one works for the LTA on the website at the weekends (obviously they presume no British player will still be playing the)

And yes.... the NTC is a beautiful building and a fantastic training facility, and you can see that an awful lot of money has been spent on it (I can't think what is lacking from it, except possibly the quality of the players...)