Doubles and Its Less Than Double Viewership

I made this observation far too late I guess, to begin with. The observation that Doubles and Mixed Doubles don't hold much value with the crowd as much as Singles does. I don't understand why. If Singles can entice, then Doubles should do twice as much as that.

Based on this observation of mine, I jotted down seven quick pointers which I pinpointed as the cause of the issue; in fact if I can add some of these pointers turned out to be effects as well thereby leading to a " Vicious Cycle " of sorts.

1. Stability/Tenure/ Rankings of the Players: How many Doubles team, let it be women's or men's or mixed are fixed or stable? Apart from the Bryan brothers or the Williams sisters, how many Doubles' partners are fixated?

To the best of my knowledge, either they are a team for a season or two or at the most three and then its someone else. In such a case, how can fans be expected to follow the game closely?

Add to this fact, is that a doubles team doesn't have a ranking system. Yes, it does have seeds but the seeds aren't that constant as the singles' seedings. It becomes kind of confusing also. Barring the Bryan brothers and the current doubles' team of Zimonjic and Nestor, frankly speaking I don't have an idea about the rest of the seeded doubles team playing currently.

2. Top seeded players: How many top seeded singles players participate in the doubles affair at the slam level?  Hardly anyone does that and to some extent that does act as a deterrent. What would be the reasons for that? One of them is the next in my list...

3. Prize money: The best example I could give is of the recently concluded Aussie Open: The winning prize money for both the Men's as well as the Women's singles was $1.5 Mn whereas a winning Doubles team got around $450, 000 per team.

The difference is huge and does this high gap reflect some of the top seeds not involving themselves in the doubles, unless its an event like the Olympics where a player plays not for self but for the country?

4. Too fast: All the three doubles: women, men and mixed are too fast, more or less on the likes of blink and miss. Where we want to see long and nice hard rallies, it just gets over in a matter of minutes. Sometimes, keeping track of the ball also becomes difficult.

Complementing the above, is my next which again is true of sorts.

5. Too short: Again all the three doubles event are too short; in the sense that, that they are just two set matches even the men's event. If a doubles team is experienced, then it doesn't take much for them to finish off their opposition in straight sets which becomes too short a match to watch.

And even if it ends up being a three setter, the longevity part is still absent.

6. Who are the players?: Like I said before, since almost all the top seeds forfeit the doubles, the players taking part are almost unheard of [they are known as doubles' specialists]. Here and there, few names stand out but most of the names do not bring any awareness with them.

Is this the reason for the lesser popularity of the game or is it the less popularity that makes the players anonymous, is something like a circle which has no beginning, or so I think.

And finally,

7. Airing the matches: The broadcasters do not air the matches. The live TV coverage only brings the singles and if, thats a big if, there are no singles matches then we get to see the coverage for the doubles.

Once again, it perplexes me whether the matches aren't aired because of low following or low following has led to less airing. Either way, it's the game which is suffering.

With what, Roger Federer winning his Olympic doubles with Stan Wawrinka, there should have been some positive response towards the game or wasn't one Roger Federer enough to provide the break through?