New idea to help competition, participation and funding for top players

Born2WinTennis · Club Coach

New idea to help competition, participation and funding for top players

Born2WinTennis · Club Coach

I've now got a test version of the new pyramid app to play about with, feel free to login and have a look:

www.filiprak.com/tennis-app

I'm now looking to fill the top few spaces of the pyramid, does anyone have any suggestions for players?

They need to be a) world ranked b) based in London when not at tournaments c) willing to play a one hour match per month for £100/month d) support/promote the app on social media

The Optimist · ATP qualifying

I'd look at the ranked players who turn out for clubs based in the South-East in the LTA team tennis as an initial list of players to approach.

Born2WinTennis · Club Coach

Great thanks, Ryan P, Neil P and Matt Short, all like the idea so far.

JonH · All-time great

out of interest, where is the money coming from (hope that isnt an impertinent question) for the fees? Are you or your company planning to sponsor this or are you looking for sponsors? Or is it self financing, the upper tier players get paid by their lower tier challengers?

Born2WinTennis · Club Coach

yeah I'm hoping it becomes self financing, otherwise it won't last more than a few months! the players lower down will be able to play their own tier of the pyramid for free, but if they want to challenge the players above them there will be a £5 subscription per month. So basically I need 20 players lower down the pyramid to cover one pro at the top.

Born2WinTennis · Club Coach

I now have the first few tiers of my new competition sorted out, in descending CH order:

Tier 1. Emily Webly-Smith (241)
Tier 2. Neil Pauffley (406) Ryan Peniston (573)
Tier 3. Matt Short (708) Julian Cash (802) Sizya Kivanda (1716) Josh Golding (1885)

Now I am looking for 8 players of 1.1 to 2.2 standard for tier 4.
Then 16 players between 3.1 to 4.2
32 players between 5.1 to 6.2
64 players between 7.1 to 8.2

Then I can open it up to the masses!

If anyone wants to see any further details I've put up some pictures here www.socialtennis.co.uk

Born2WinTennis · Club Coach

*Rant Alert

Some stunning logic from Middlesex LTA today around why they can't help promote my new competition...

"it's a new competition but similar to other competitions/websites already existing. If we support 1 then would get more enquiries in"

So we are not going to support/promote any competitions because if we do then we might get asked to support/promote more...and this is from an organisation supposedly trying to promote tennis. I'm stunned.

Born2WinTennis · Club Coach

Just hit 64 players and therefore the 7th tier of my new competition!

LTA Player entry list here

The Optimist · ATP qualifying

Well done.... but only EWS entered in the women?

Born2WinTennis · Club Coach

Yep, very poor. I contacted about 10 high standard ladies I know personally and not one of them even got back to me, let alone expressed any interest. So after that I had to decide how to concentrate my very limited marketing resources. The demographic who had entered at that stage, either via the LTA website or via a Facebook Ad were all male, rated between 7.1 and 8.2 and born between 1995 and 1988. So that's who I concentrated on advertising too. Usually in my other competitions I get between 10-20% ladies...but you can take a horse to water and all that.

Ace Ventura · Tennis legend

I'm not sure if it's just a general reflection of tennis in this country, but I also noticed it was about a 90/10 South/North divide and pretty much all in London and the surrounding counties.

Edit - saw this thread a while back, but just re-read and clearly states more focused toward Gr London.

-- Edited by Ace Ventura on Monday 1st of April 2019 01:22:16 PM

Born2WinTennis · Club Coach

Yes it is really just for the South East of England at the moment to minimise travel distances (they can always meet half way). There's nothing stopping other pyramids to be created elsewhere in the country, but London was an obvious first choice to start. When I ran county based singles league, I also had strong leagues in Greater Manchester, Wales and Scotland.

Born2WinTennis · Club Coach

Good news...

Over 130 players on my pyramid competition web application now app.socialtennis.co.uk

I hosted my first match evening this week in west london, where ten of the players came down, played a few FAST4 singles matches and had some drinks in the bar afterwards.

Not so good news...

Sadly still very few ladies, only 3 or 4 I think.

Even worse for the whole raising money for pros thing, no one has actually challenged them to a match and they only get paid if they play matches. I had assumed if a load of 1.1 to 2.2s enter that would encourage a lot of 3.1 to 4.2s to enter, but while within the 130 players there is actually every possible rating of player (1.1 to 10.2) mainly the pyramid has 1.1 to 2.2 then a huge gap down to 6.2 to 10.2
So the gulf in class between a 6.2 to a 2.2 is too much to make a worthwhile match, even if it still would be fun to play and meet a pro.

As always any feedback or ideas welcome, but at the moment, it's not looking like the pros are adding anything or indeed taking anything from the competition sadly.

Born2WinTennis · Club Coach

Over 200 players on my pyramid competition now, which is great. I've also added a load of new features:

Doubles - a separate pyramid for doubles so you can challenge three other players
Leaderboards - win/ratios filtered by event (singles/doubles) and period, you can choose 7, 30, 60 days or G.O.A.T. (shows who has the most wins since the competition started)
Offers - a section that can display offers to all the users, presently only showing one offer for 10% off at all things tennis.

I've contacted most of the clubs in London and asked if they would like me to host a singles tournament. Only around 10% of them have responded, but I've got a few lined up. They get a free singles tournament for their members and I get them to sign up to the pyramid to enter the results, which is a decent way of advertising.

Also with zero paid google advertising it also appears first on bing search results and second on google search results when you search for "Social Tennis". I named it that after the French concept of always buying your opponent a drink, when you beat them...for me it's 50% about the tennis and 50% about the beer afterwards....or a much higher percentage towards beer if I have lost!

What I have also done is setup a standalone pyramid (with a different website address) for one of the largest clubs in Surrey called Westside LTC. They have over 70 players using it to replace their old singles ladder system. It's really easy for my developer to setup a new pyramid, so theoretically we could have them all over the UK or all over the world.

I'm also going to setup a link from the competition website to this one, to hopefully encourage some more people to visit and contribute on this forum.