A New and Different Tennis Set-Up Changes Everything

My, how the world has changed. And all for the better, I think. In place of the once popular world tour of all-losers-eliminated 64-32-16-8-4 knockout tennis tournaments, the old 15-30-deuce-advantage games and sets, and those wonderfully informative (and devastating for all but the top 5) world rankings, we have ended up with a very different world indeed, a world of 40, or even 40 times 3 (= 120) undisputed world champions, of special events, of sub-category “bracket rankings”, of three foreign visitor superstar heels per month, and of multiple titles that matter. Quite a number of titles that are important now in our new world and that each have different people out there gunning hard for a chance to win them. How did we get here? The ATP and WTA were both heading in the “slightly corrupt” direction, which was already dwindling the value of the sponsorship deals package, and then first the ATP and then also the WTA ended up selling out to a major media conglomerate, who then came up with other plans of their own, mainly of acquiring large and strategic media giants in Asia, in West Africa and in Latin America. They therefore put the entire sport up for sale again, and this time, a deal was struck, allowing our team of young and creative planners and thinkers here at BrainStorm to acquire a 54% stake in world tennis, payable in instalments over the next 35 years in a loan deal (we would not have had the cash to buy even 3% any other way). This way, we get to play and MediaCommsCorp gets to profit from our ground-breaking adventures. Now let’s be honest, most great inventions come into being with some inspiration, and our main inspiration has been a 2022 book by Joseph Oakwood, in which he pulls in all his fabulous new and crazy ideas, into tennis, in this fantastically successful way. Some of these ideas have their origins in performance wrestling, that’s obvious and it is no secret, but what we ended up doing with it was not a scripted show, which predetermines how each match will end. Quite the opposite, each player is free to go out there, do his best, and if he or she wins enough points, to win the match. But we never said we were setting up a fully level playing field, at least not under all circumstances. In order to entice the big names back into the sport, along with a line-up of celebrities from other backgrounds, models, actors, actresses, musicians, TV show presenters, and superstars from other sports, which was a game changer for us.