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NTL-National Tennis League, What do you think?

• Hey I wrote this up a little while ago because I was thinking about how to make tennis more popular in the USA. Please read and give some coherent answers and comments. Thank you. Ideas for National Tennis League: -Splits the professional season into two 4 month sections. -1 section where the players play for a team in team competition against other teams, with teams representing major cities as they do in other American professional sport. The season would culminate in playoffs with a champion team being crowned. -1 section where the players play individually in tournaments around the world including the grand slams as they play now. The grand slams would be spaced out with one month between each with 2 tier 1 tournaments between each and then a rest week right before the grand slams. Many of the minor tournaments would not be played by the high level professional players or would be played by lower ranked players. -Attracts people to a sport in a way they have not been before. Team sports are popular in America. -Rules for National Tennis League: -5 starters who play singles -4 starters who play doubles(can include players from the singles play or be different) -Play 2 out of 3 set matches -Each game is played first one to reach 6 points. No ad scoring and no win by 2 scoring. -Each set is determined by first to 6 games with no win by 2 scoring. -Setup of the matchplay would be as follows: -#1 singles play first alone(main attraction) -#2 singles, #3 singles, and #4 singles then play at the same time on different courts. -#5 singles, #1 doubles, and #2 doubles then play to finish and decide the winning team. -Each win by a singles or doubles team is worth 1 point. First team to reach 4 points wins. -If a team reaches 4 points before all 7 matches are completed the remaining matches must still be completed, however reserve players can be substituted in for the scheduled players if the team decides to do so to prevent possible injury to main players. -Each team will carry 14 players with 5-7 starters and 7-9 reserves. Season: -Will extend over a 4 month period -16 teams total in 2 conferences(east, west) with 8 teams in each conference. -Each team will player a match against every other team in its conference once(28 matches per conference) plus 5 matches against 5 teams from the other conference (40 matches total) resulting in 12 matches per team and 96 matches total for the regular season. -Each team will have one match per week for the first 12 weeks of the season resulting in a 3 month long regular season. Playoffs: -top 4 teams from both conferences advance to the playoffs. -same format of regular season matchplay with a 3 out of 5 series between the #1 and #4 seeded teams and #2 and #3 seeded teams in each conference semifinal. -Seeding will be based on regular season records, if a tie should occur in records then the team that won the head to head match would get the spot. -Conference Finals will also be a 3 out of 5 series between the winners of the conference semifinals with 1 team advancing from each conference to the finals. -The National Tennis League Championship will be a 4 out of 7 series played between the 2 conference champions. The first one to win 4 matches will be crowned champion. Pros to the NTL: -Would hopefully finally make tennis a popular sport in America. Tennis is the best sport in my opinion and has never been given the respect it deserves in the U.S. This is because not enough people have gotten interested in it. Hopefully with team competition and easy to access viewing at stadiums in big cities, a large fan base would grow and tennis could become a big hit. -Would hopefully spark some young talent in America as there is a drought in young American tennis talent at the moment. We need a future! -Would give some lower ranked players on the ATP a chance to make some money and gain some fame as they struggle on the top tour. With 14 players on 16 teams that gives spots to 224 players. The top 224 players on the ATP are all amazing, talented players, so there would always be high quality tennis, but it would give chances to those players in the 100-200 ranked range a chance to escape anonymity. Cons to the NTL: -The biggest one I see is funding. Funding to build stadiums around the country, funding to pay the players, funding to hire staff and coaches and management and broadcasters for each team, funding for advertising, and funding for a billion other things. The NTL would need to develop a wide fanbase and get some good television deals and get people to come out to the matches to be able to survive. Also the NTL would need some rich sponsors to start the sport off. -Finding a time of the year when people would have time to watch and developing a fanbase. I often hear friends and family complain when football/basketball season is over that they have no sports to

• Answer:

  I'm glad you took the time to write this up. Sounds very interesting. However, the match play you proposed is similar to the current USTA adult league matches. For example, a team in an adult league play 3 lines of doubles and 2 lines of singles on the spring mixed league. They play home and away for about 2.5 to 3 months. Very similar to what you proposed. IMHO, sadly, tennis in the US will never be as big as basketball, baseball, football, and hockey. Even when US tennis was really big in the early 90s with Sampras, Agassi, Chang, and Courier, the public didn't really have the interest. They'd rather watch a football or a boring baseball game, that I just don't understand. I guess tennis was not invented in the US, and that's one problem. Most of what the US like to watch and play were invented in the US. And what's even more disappointing is that a sport network like ESPN would rather replay old World Series of Poker events than broadcast some old classic tennis matches. That's just unacceptable. I honestly don't know how to promote tennis to the vase US audience. Billie Jean King has done a wonderful job with World Team Tennis. But I feel something is missing. And I'm not sure what it is that can really grab the US public. Your NTL proposal was interesting, but even a league like the WNBA is struggling to survive. I guess Americans have our own sports, but I just wish tennis, or even soccer would be more popular in the US :)