The LTA

Born2WinTennis · Club Coach

The LTA

Bob in Spain · Tennis legend

Born2WinTennis wrote:
I guess this is a bit like asking how long is a piece of string. Anyone with a 4G iphone, tripod and power supply could theoretically live stream a tennis match, with no commentary, for a minimal labour cost of say £100/day. To a specialist camera crew with expensive equipment and post production work, would easily be upwards of £1000/day. Let's take the middle ground, with a rough budget of £500/day for 5 days.

If it does cost roughly around £25k to host a $15k then an extra £2500 for live-streaming and a highlights package would only represent a 10% increase in the budget. It would then offer a far better package for potential sponsors to provide court-side advertisements, or adverts included in the footage. As long as the additional cost was outweighed by the increase in sponsorship then it sounds like a no brainer to me.

I love the idea of this, I'm sure it would also help players getting sponsorship deals, because they could say the logos on their kit get viewed by xxx amount of people on youtube etc.
This could be done for all the UK pro events, finals of team tennis and then the junior nationals etc.

.......... per court ?

paulisi · Tennis legend

"If it does cost roughly around £25k to host a $15k then an extra £2500 for live-streaming and a highlights package would only represent a 10% increase in the budget."

I have it on good authority that it costs somewhere in the region of 35-40K to host a 15K.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Guess it depends if they're having to pay daft 'event centres' or not.

The tournament director in Egypt that Emily Webley-Smith interviewed said 20k for a 10k event.

But pricing is presumably different there. And the prize money has now gone up.

I've been told 25-30k.

NB Of course, if it's more expensive, it makes the point even better, that the increase in cost is even smaller as a percentage.

-- Edited by Coup Droit on Thursday 30th of November 2017 02:42:51 PM

paulisi · Tennis legend

Thinking about it - I'm not sure which currency cost was in. Presumably dollars

Born2WinTennis · Club Coach

Yes I was thinking of just the main/centre court for £500/day and my rough cost of hosting a 15k USD was 25k GBP.
We should put the live-streaming and Bobs festival-of-tennis-for-futures ideas in a business case and present it to the LTA.

The Optimist · ATP qualifying

I think our LondonTennisTube poster has tried to get some LTA backing/promotion/support for his excellent videos but I don't believe he has had any success.

-- Edited by The Optimist on Friday 1st of December 2017 12:25:53 PM

Born2WinTennis · Club Coach

Thanks, I will get in touch with him on facebook and see what he says about it.

Bob in Spain · Tennis legend

Born2WinTennis wrote:
Yes I was thinking of just the main/centre court for £500/day and my rough cost of hosting a 15k USD was 25k GBP.
We should put the live-streaming and Bobs festival-of-tennis-for-futures ideas in a business case and present it to the LTA.

Clearly if you are going to put the "festival of tennis" idea into action, the costs of running such a week are going to be substantially higher. There will need to be professional coaches on site to provide the taster courses for kids and coaching award courses for wannabe adult coaches. There will need to be a marketing budget set aside and a marketing team in action for the two weeks leading up to the festival. I am sure the LTA already have such people in place and on salary, but I prefer to assume worst case scenario.

So let's go OTT and say that the budget for such a week could be 100k sterling. I think that should cover everything. We may even be able to live stream more than one court in that budget. wink

With regard to the number of tournaments each year, let's go for 36 - that's 18 each for the men and women. Three blocks of three each in the first half of the year, then after the grass court and Wimbledon season, they could do another three blocks of three each in the second half of the year. So now I am up to a total budget of 3.6m sterling.

So we need a major sponsor. Well, there was once a guy called David Lloyd who famously said (shortly before the DC final if my memory is correct) that Andy Murray doesn't do enough for British Tennis. And before you get the wrong end of the stick, I am NOT suggesting Andy should fund this. No, I am thinking more about David Lloyd himself. Perhaps he could set Andy an example and sponsor this through his own company.

I was on the David Lloyd Clubs website. Memberships can typically be £50 - £80 per month with some recalculation for family group rates etc. I note however that across all his clubs, he has in excess of 560.000 members. Now if he were to allocate just 50p per month per member to sponsoring the "British Tennis Festival Roadshow", that would equate to 3.36m sterling. That pretty much finances the whole shebang without beginning to take into account other potential revenue streams that have previously been discussed.

In return, he would get nationwide advertising coverage for his clubs. He would be on all the macro marketing media through the LTA, and have massive marketing at local level for each tournament. His club details would be all over the thousands of programmes handed out for kids to get autographs (things that kids tend to keep rather than throw away). Kids that attended the taster sessions would get free sweat bands and T-shirts with his club details splashed all over them. He would get coverage on local radio through the tournament promotion and of course his big company banner wold be emblazoned all over the live stream broadcasts. I am sure there are plenty of other ideas as to how he could increase his coverage still further.

So before we go to the LTA, maybe we should speak to David Lloyd. Worst case scenario ? All he can do is say "No".

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

lisa whybourn @lisawhybourn
1h1 hour ago

lisa whybourn Retweeted The Big Racket

"Can confirm that there is something the aussies are doing so much better than the Brits. U wouldn't travel half way round the world and not be allowed to hit and eat dinner with the other aussies "

This is similar to the story of the youngsters who travel to tournaments on their own who are then completely ignored, not even said hello to, by the GB coaches, let alone allowed to be any part of the GB travelling group.

It makes me SO mad.....

From Izzy Wallace, via the Big Racket interview:

"The LTAs loss is Tennis Australias gain and after a difficult start to her professional career, Wallace is receiving the support she so sorely desired from the LTA. Tennis Australia has been really really good to me. They mentor and really help me out at tournaments, keeping in touch despite being so far away and not being in the academy training programme over there.

This support is welcomed by Isabelle, who felt like she didnt receive as much as she may have deserved in Britain. I think the LTA definitely has their favourites and stick to them. They have so much money and really dont help a lot of the girls in the UK, especially the ones that need it.

indiana · Tennis legend

Agree that it is maddening. Someone needs to put a bomb up the backsides of some LTA folk. So to speak.

I know it has been suggested before that Izzy might seem to have a sense of entitlement. I would say that there are some expectations that are not unreasonable.

Spectator · All-time great

That's just terrible. Surely someone somewhere must realise how divisive such things are?

Strongbow · All-time great

Hear no evil, See no evil, Speak no evil wink

skibbarriz · Strong Club Player

Spectator wrote:
That's just terrible. Surely someone somewhere must realise how divisive such things are?

It's an organisation culture issue. Where someone here might see divisiveness, the LTA will see order and structure.

But it's not worth getting worked up over the dopes in the LTA, even though it's easy to do.

The Realist · Junior player

The LTA have always had their favourites. If you don't get on the gravy train early on, they are just not interested.....