Virgile Caillet, General Delegate of Union Sport & Cycle, enlightens us on the challenges and the necessary transformations of a discipline which must reinvent itself.
Two years ago, he participated in the States General on the tennis ecosystem organized by the French Tennis Federation (FFT).
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Roland-Garros: how tennis runs behind its lost attractiveness
Is tennis still an attractive sport?
VIRGILE CAILLET.
Difficult to answer such a question brutally.
For some age categories, those of Generation Z (
Editor's note: 10/18 year olds
) for example, tennis does not meet their expectations, which correspond to a world without constraints made of immediate satisfaction and pleasure.
Tennis is long-term work.
Is the discipline therefore forced to react?
In any case, this should challenge its leaders because the phenomenon will continue over time.
Two years ago, the federation caused a general meeting of its sport.
It was urgent.
Tennis needs to review its attractiveness.
In a 2017 study, we learned that 64% of players had been playing for more than 10 years and 45% for more than 20 years.
We are witnessing an aging process and it is not the over 40s who will renew the workforce.
How to make this sport more attractive?
It must be more open, more fun to broaden its base again.
In the 1980s, tennis was the sport of fashion, that of the gentlemen who, to caricature, always had a racket in their trunk to go and play.
Tennis must find an identity.
Is the battle lost against football, for example?
Tennis has the answer in its genes like padel for example.
We rediscover the game of racket, the pleasure of playing.
It is also an accessible and intergenerational gateway.
Is tennis a popular sport?
In its organization, if only with the need to have a court available, this discipline is more complex than others.
An application allows mobility of places of practice.
It is an answer.
Still few clubs allow you to reserve slots in this way.
The federation seeks to recruit licensees when people seek above all to practice.
Athletics is experiencing a similar phenomenon: 13 million French people run but only 300,000 have a license.
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Can the absence of charismatic players explain this disaffection?
Tennis must find modernity with the outfits, the players.
When you have to build an icon, you need rough edges.
However, the world of tennis nowadays tends to put players in molds.
They are too standardized and framed, so that they do not shock anyone.
But simple identification with a model will not be enough to attract the younger generations.
