How Tennis Is Reaching the Next Generation of Fans

As Wimbledon 2026 enters its second week, here’s a noteworthy data point: two of the most-watched TikTok videos from the tournament’s first week had nothing to do with tennis. 

The first clip shows Naomi Osaka’s iconic entrances to The Championships, wearing a custom kimono-style dress. The second is a snippet from Coco Gauff’s on-court interview after her first-round win, in which she shares her experience of attending the Bad Bunny show at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, including dancing in La Casita along with Novak Djokovic. 

The appeal of this type of content is hardly surprising. In the post-Big Three (on the men’s tour) and Serena Williams (despite the attempted comeback) era, tennis is increasingly relying on pop culture and fashion to attract new audiences. And it’s doing so by combining cultural relevance with short-form, digitally native storytelling.

Building a Social-First Brand

When the WTA was working on a new brand identity, it asked its players for feedback and where the tour could improve. Gauff’s answer was clear. “Social content,” she said. “Obviously I’m someone who is on social media a lot. So yeah, a lot more TikToks and following the trends that a lot of the other sports are doing, which I know the WTA has a plan in place.”

That plan has come to fruition. The WTA has been working with TikTok since October 2025, and the collaboration has helped the tour surpass one million followers and record the fastest growth rate of any women’s sports organisation on the platform. The partnership has deepened in 2026, with WTA content generating more than 90 million video views and engagements on TikTok – an increase of 61% year-over-year.

The tour’s digital footprint continued to expand on other platforms as well:

• In 2025, WTA’s social media following grew 28% year-over-year to 8.2 million.

• Total social video views and engagements surpassed 1.6 billion, up 90% year-over-year.

• In China, the WTA became the most engaged-with tennis organization across all major platforms.

The latest move by the WTA perfectly reflects its content strategy: in May, the tour launched “Style Unpacked,” a new athlete-focused short-form digital series on its YouTube channel. “The vision is definitely about being bigger than tennis,” said Marina Storti, CEO of WTA Ventures, the tour’s commercial division. “It’s about being part of conversations outside of tennis and within tennis; it’s about being culturally relevant and resonant.”

The ATP’s Content Playbook

The ATP is following a similar path. In late 2025, the tour partnered with Spotify to distribute content celebrating the intersection of tennis and culture. The collaboration came on the heels of content partnerships with youth-focused media brand Overtime and with TikTok, which produced impressive results: 

• Player-led short-form content created by Overtime generated over 80 million views across TikTok and Instagram. More than half of the total views came from new fans, with 67% of viewers under the age of 35.

• During the first year of the ATP-TikTok partnership, posts under #tennis increased by more than 25% on the platform.

• The number of top 100-ranked ATP players with a TikTok account has nearly doubled since the partnership began.

“This is about growing our audience, and in particular, targeting men’s tennis fans who might not be following the ATP week in and week out, more kind of dipping in and out around the Grand Slams,” said Andrew Walker, senior vice president of brand and marketing at the ATP. “So it’s bringing those fans – Gen Z and Millennials primarily – into the ATP funnel, by finding ways to create cool content and serve it on channels on which they’re already living.”

Once fans enter the ATP funnel, the tour is making a concerted effort to bridge the gap with social media by introducing formats that fans engage with on these platforms. For example, the new and improved Tennis TV app – the official streaming service of the ATP Tour – uses AI-powered content creation technology to auto-crop thousands of videos into vertical formats. 

The technology also enables the ATP to provide behind-the-scenes content at scale. The way it works is simple: the tour places cameras all around the site during tournaments. These cameras feed the system with footage, and the system uses player faces to recognize when, for instance, Carlos Alcarez is in the gym – and create a clip of him warming up, which can then be easily distributed across channels.

“While tennis is absolutely core to our product, we know that it’s really important for the fans to engage with the players as personalities,” said Michael Thorne, head of content at Tennis TV. “And by seeing them behind the scenes or on practice calls, having a bit more fun, perhaps a bit more relaxed, the fans can build that relationship, so that when it comes to actually watching a match, they feel very invested.”

The Tech Behind the Stories

The lesson extends well beyond tennis. As younger audiences discover sports through culture, personalities, and social platforms, rights holders need to think beyond the game itself. Repackaging competition into culturally relevant, player-led, bite-sized stories helps organizations connect with casual fans who may not follow every match but are eager to engage with the people, moments, and conversations surrounding the sport.

Delivering that volume and variety of storytelling consistently requires the right technology. AI-powered content creation platforms enable organizations to instantly transform live and behind-the-scenes footage into platform-ready clips tailored to different channels, making it easier to meet fans wherever they consume content. Because today, social content is no longer just about promoting the sport; it is increasingly how the next generation falls in love with it.