It seems to me that there are lots of good reasons for futures. They're a great place for young players to make a start. They're a great place for people who are generally at a higher level but have had a dip in form (cf Mr Bogdanovic) -- gives them a chance to regain confidence and gain points. They're fun for people who are good enough to play professionally at that level but don't want to go on the Tour full time ... gives them (at whatever age) the chance to engage with the professional game and is useful for the newer players as a testing ground against more battle-honed folk. And if people are good enough to be in the top-25 or so nationally and want to play even if they're not going to get much higher, just because they love the game and want to do the best that they can ... well, why shouldn't they? If I were that good, I might want to keep going, too!

And I do think there should be more money available -- for the good of the whole game, not simply the players. Firstly, the argument that people don't go to Futures, ergo they must not be of interest and therefore don't merit further recompense doesn't fully hold water for me. I think there are probably a fair number of people who would happily trot along to a futures match (especially on a grass court in the summer .... but at other times too) if any effort whatsoever were made to present them as something worth watching. Or even something that you could find without first needing a secret map, a special key and a password whispered in hushed tones. Why not try to create the market? Or if you don't think that Futures ("your chance to see the stars of the future") would do it, why not try to create something like the various club systems in other countries, mixing players of different (professional) ability levels? A "club tour" could help raise income levels, let lower-level players mingle with those at a higher level, and get more viewers.

And the benefits could well go beyond the enrichment of the players. At present, it often feels as if the great British public doesn't know anything between a pleasant batting of the ball back and forth on a summer's day and Wimbledon (OK, maybe Queens as well). The more you could make tennis something that people can watch, at a level where it's fun, locally, the more people I think would engage with the sport. That could mean more people playing at a basic level (good for health, if nothing else) and it could also potentially increase the pool of people playing at a higher level.

SMC1809 wrote:

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Spectator, I agree with a lot of what you're saying. There's a phrase - "the public gets what the public wants" (or a song lyric anyway), but the reality is the public gets what they're told they want.  

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I think that this point sufficiently answers the question. It's just an issue of marketing and for once, I'm not going to put the whole blame on people in charge since luck and First Mover Advantage play a very important role.

If it's just an issue of talent, why do female tennis players swim in money whilst female footballers depend on the men's game to even make a subsistence level income? Don't get me wrong, I adore women's tennis and don't care about football played by people of either gender, but I don't see why one is better or worse than the other. I think the answer is that someone, somewhere down history, made women's tennis popular enough to appeal to mainstream attention, and the same couldn't be done for football.

Ultimately 95% of sports followers* are just seeking a hero to cling on to and the sad reality of sport is that to make money out of it, you need to attract the glory hunters. Haven't we seen the buzz surrounding British Futures level wild cards at Wimbledon (well, the buzz doesn't exist any more, since the LTA have employed that tried and tested path to success - limiting opportunities)? Did those guys suddenly become talented when they got a wild card? Obviously, it was just a combination of media-hype and people hoping that there was a potential to jump up on their bandwagon. And it's not unique to Wimbly, lower ranked players have received genuine, wholehearted bucketloads  of support when they've played the Davis Cup or the erstwhile Aberdeen Cup, which are/were heavily promoted. Again, did they suddenly become better players?

If, somehow, we can promote the Futures, or at least Challengers, to that degree I have absolutely no qualms in believing that players ranked better than 500 will become self-sufficient. You just need to find a way to tell your average "OMG!!! USAIN BOLT IS SO FAST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111"sports fan that they're watching the greatest tennis player in the south of England or something like that, and the cash will flow.

SMC1809 wrote:

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Snooker is a classic example. With a mass of hype, 2 men hitting ball around a 12 x 6 table was watched by 16 million viewers in the UK at one point in the past. Similarly, how many people would have watched the Paralympics without the warm-up act beforehand and the publicity that has surrounded it.

 

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Or the Olympics itself, for that matter. How many fanboys and fangirls can tell you where those athletes are running this week or where those rowers are? I think less than 1% of the people who watched the Olympics.  Most of the sports in the Olympics are not even remotely marketable on tactics alone, so you have to rely on creating heroes and bringing in the nationalistic angle.

Look at the beauty of a kosher sport like tennis or cricket - it lies in the underlying Game theory. You have to adjust your strategies according to what your opponent is doing (and in the case of cricket, even the weather and the pitch), what works for one opponent will not work for another. The richness of tactics is what makes such sports remarkable, and one can even enjoy looking at a game being played at the local park. This is most unlike running, where you just need to run as fast as you can and then hope that the others are slower. You don't think "I'll just run a bit slowly this time and see what happens. Ho, ho, ho, what intrigue!" 

I don't doubt for even one second that Mo Farah is as good a sportsperson as Djokovic, but I sincerely doubt that the public equally enjoy their respective professions. Most tennis fans would watch Djokovic clinically decimate his opponents, all day, but how many people would watch a man run all day long? It's just a dude running, after all! I speak as a person who is working his backside off to train for amateur half-marathons and I wouldn't dream of making a tape of me running and telling my friends to watch it given how monotonous it is, unlike my comically inadept football skills, which, no matter how sub-standard, will make for decent viewing given that it features me trying to outthink other people (and failing at it). 

* and the other 5% are sad fishes like Salmon who land up on sites like these