Legendary Tennis Coach Patrick Mouratoglou on What Makes a Champion—And How His New Tour Is Revolutionizing the Sport

What pushed me to do it is the demographics of tennis. The average age of a tennis fan is 61 years old. For golf, it’s 65—the two oldest sports fan bases in the world, and every year it’s one year older—and it’s been this way for more than 20 years. Why? I think it’s important to understand the reasons, because this is why we do UTS. The world has changed—the way people consume has completely changed since the advent of social media, streaming platforms, video games. The format of tennis was created in the 19th century, and it has never changed—it doesn’t fit the way the world is now. And we love tennis—I’m from that tennis base. I’m 53, not 61, but I fell in love with tennis in the ’70s, like the fan base. But if we continue like that, it’s not going to work.

So in 2020, during the pandemic, I got a team together and I said, “Imagine that we created tennis today—what would it look like, knowing what we know about how people consume?” And we created a new format, with the goal to build a tour like the ATP tour—not to compete with them, but to bring new fans on board. And we’ve been lucky to have had, in our first four competitions, seven out of the 10 best players in the world, among other great players. Our idea is to bring the most exciting players—people like Gael Monfils, Nick Kyrgios, Frances Tiafoe—and put them in a short format where the match lasts 45 minutes, max: four quarters of eight minutes, and a sudden death if necessary at the end. It’s very dynamic, with no downtime, but with a DJ between points and a crowd that is able to connect with the players during the match—even if that means shouting during the points. It’s a completely different experience. We’re in LA now, and then we’ll go to Frankfurt, to Asia, and to the Middle East.

Has anybody from the ATP or the WTA or from any of tennis’s other governing bodies tried to talk to you or discourage you from doing this?

Not at all. I think the governing bodies are completely aware of the situation with the fan base, and I don’t think they really can change much about the way tennis is, because the fan base is extremely conservative and extremely traditional, and any time you want to change something, they get really angry. So I think it’s best to have two different tours—one for traditional tennis fans, and one to bring new fans on board. I think the ATP and WTA want to see what that looks like, but maybe in the future we can partner with them.