Indian Wells Tennis: Lack of Early-Round TV Coverage Makes Absolutely No Sense

I’m not a marketing expert by any means, so I could be way off here, but bear with me for a minute.

Yesterday when I went online looking for my daily tennis fix, the magical world of Internet streams presented me with three options: Challenger tennis from Sarajevo, Challenger tennis doubles from Santiago or has-been tennis from Zurich (a.k.a the Champions’ tour).

The glaring omission from the probably illegal site’s list of streams was Indian Wells.

It wasn’t an oversight by the stream provider. No, just as it has been for as long as I can remember, the only way to watch the first round from Indian Wells is to pack your bags and head for the Californian desert.

It has been a similar tale at some smaller events this year. For example, it was frustrating not being able to watch the opening round from Sydney in January. Even the early days of a Masters event took place under a cloak of invisibility.

It’s particularly grating given that the tournament is one of the biggest in the USA—a market where tennis has been slowly losing ground for years.

To put Indian Wells into perspective:

Depending on your view of the World Tour Finals, Indian Wells is arguably the fifth most important tennis event on the calendar.

In 2010, almost 340,000 people made through the turnstiles making it the fifth highest attended tennis tournament. The Stadium court there holds 16,100 people.  More than Centre Court in Wimbledon, Court Philippe Chatrier in Paris and the Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne.

With its inflated draw size and dual status, Indian Wells vies for “fifth slam” marketing jargon with Miami.  Another thing it shares with the Key Biscayne tournament is the absence of early round coverage.

How Tennis expects to improve its market standing in the US when the second and third most important tournaments are partially ignored is completely beyond me. I cannot even conceive of a similar situation arising in another major sport.

Looking at yesterday’s card, there was lost opportunity for improved mainstream tennis coverage. Former US Open Champion Juan Martin Del Potro once again looked like a player headed back to the elite of the game, and four out of the five American men in action won.

Even Donald Young, flogged half to death by IMG as teenager, picked up a win.  While on the women’s side, teenage prospects Sloane Stephens and Christine McHale justified their wild cards with opening round victories.

Maybe I’m missing something and there is an obvious reason why you have more of a chance of witnessing Halley’s Comet during a thunderstorm, than you do of seeing coverage from Indian Wells.  But it beats me.

Maybe I’m not missing anything. Maybe I'm just stating the obvious and the lack of first-round coverage is just another example of the nonsensical maladministration and poor marketing that continues to blight the sport.

Stephen Kelly blogs about tennis at www.shanktennis.com