August saw the Association Of Tennis Professionals (ATP) and the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) launched their first marketing collaboration in the form of a digital content series called ‘Tennis United: CrossCourt’.
‘Tennis United’ explores life on both tours from behind the scenes through a series of intimate and in-depth one-on-one conversations between ATP and WTA stars – one from each tour – and consists of eight short-format episodes. In these, the players discuss a range of seldom touched upon topics relating to the sport and provide tennis fans with a fresh perspective on the experiences, pressures and privileges of life in professional tennis.
For example, the series features Dominic Thiem and Madison Keys discussing mental health pressures, while tennis’ newlywed star couple Gael Monfils and Elina Svitolina talk of finding love on Tour, Andrey Rublev and Aryna Sabalenka shine a spotlight on handling defeat, while Felix Auger-Aliassime and Jennifer Brady debate the positives and negatives of on-court coaching.
The campaign debuted on 17 August with ‘Tennis United: CrossCourt – Series Trailer’, while the series itself drops on 25 August.
New episodes will debut every Wednesday across YouTube and via other ATP/WTA digital channels.
The aim of the series is to further build collaboration between the two tours and to provide thought leadership and explore future directions across social media, digital, and branding with the umbrella objective of ‘maximising engagement through joint storytelling and creating efficiencies on key projects’.
The initiative, originally planned for the suspended 2020 season, is the first co-branded work from the two organising bodies as they transition to a more integrated marketing operation.
“Few professional sports have the opportunity that tennis does, to tell an authentic story of male and female athletes united,” said explained ATP/WTA SVP Brand Marketing Dan Ginger. “This has always been our vision for Tennis United. Creating a centralised marketing team across the Tours allows us to further reduce fragmentation within the sport and focus on positioning tennis as a leading global entertainment property.”
The show was developed by sports agency MATTA which worked on the new visual identity and who’s other recent tennis projects include the ATP’s and WTA’s ‘Tennis is Life’ campaign.
While supporting the ATP/WTA joint teams on ideation and creative direction for the series was a group at Racquet Magazine – which also serves as presenting partner of the series.
Comment:
This marketing campaign follows on from other ATP/WTA collaborations in related fields such as commercial and communications such as recent joint-brand partnerships with TopCourt and Tennis Clash.
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