British Tennis Forum - Celebrating 20 Years!

This is what ChatGPT says about the matter

There are essentially four commercial reasons.

1. They want the maximum number of premium matches on TV

The US Open is extraordinarily valuable television inventory. You want Alcaraz, Djokovic, Gauff, Sabalenka etc. in prominent evening slots.

But tennis has an enormous scheduling problem: you dont know whether the preceding match will last 90 minutes or 4½ hours.

So a 7pm match can become an 11pm match, which becomes a 12:30am match.

Venus Williams match starting at 12:13am was the most extreme example this year.

2. They dont want to leave money on the table

Imagine youre ESPN.

At 11pm you have:

US Open Carlos Alcaraz vs X

There are still 700,000 people watching.

You could say:

Sorry everyone, were cutting away because its late.

Or you can keep broadcasting it.

Obviously you keep broadcasting it.

The marginal cost of keeping the television feed running is tiny compared with the value of the rights and advertising.

3. New York is a deliberately late-night sports market

The US Open has embraced the idea that New York is a city that doesnt go to bed early.

Theres a certain cachet to having the night session become a New York sporting event particularly when a big-name player is involved.

The Venus match demonstrated that there can still be thousands of people in the stadium well after midnight. The Guardian reported that several thousand remained for her historic late start.

4. Television doesnt care nearly as much about the empty seats as we do

This is the crucial point.

A television shot showing 70% empty seats looks dreadful to us.

But from ESPNs perspective, if there are 500,000 people at home, the empty seats are basically irrelevant.



But heres the bit I think is commercially questionable

The US Open is effectively optimising for television utilisation rather than the live spectator experience.

And that creates a vicious circle.

You sell a night-session ticket.

You expect:

7pm 11pm-ish

Instead, the first match goes four hours and the second doesnt start until midnight.

People have gone home.

Public transport becomes problematic.

Staff have to work extraordinarily late.

Players are being asked to perform at ridiculous times.

And then you get a half-empty stadium.

Thats not a great product.

Indeed, Venus herself questioned why she was being asked to start at 12:13am, saying she didnt know another sport where you had to start that late.

And theres an even bigger problem

It isnt actually necessary to create these ridiculous starts.

The tournament could simply impose a harder last-start time.

For example:

Night session: two matches, but no new match may start after 11pm.

If the first match runs long, the second match moves to the next available court/day.

That would mean occasionally losing a little television inventory.

But youd gain:

* better player welfare
* better spectator experience
* fuller stadiums
* less disruption
* better atmosphere
* fewer ridiculous 121am starts.

And I suspect the real reason they dont do it is that the television rights are worth more than the marginal benefit of protecting the live event experience.

So, in a nutshell:

Are people watching at 1:30am? Some absolutely are particularly hardcore tennis fans and fans of the players involved.

Is the audience still commercially meaningful? Potentially yes, because even a relatively small audience can be valuable when the marginal cost of broadcasting is tiny.

Is a 1:30am start commercially optimal? Id say not really. Its more a consequence of a tournament structure designed around maximising TV inventory and accommodating unpredictable match lengths.

And theres an amusing irony here: the US Open is probably one of the worlds most commercially successful tennis tournaments precisely because it is willing to do things that would be considered completely unacceptable at Wimbledon.