The inaugural edition of the Ultimate Tennis Showdown (UTS) proved to be a huge success, as the event was a hit with both casual and ardent tennis fans.
Organized by
Patrick Mouratoglou, who has coached
Serena Williams for a number of years, the event featured an innovative new format that set it apart from traditional tennis tournaments. It was played over five weeks at the Mouratoglou Tennis Academy, and featured several of the ATP's top players. The final saw World No.8
Matteo Berrettini defeat World No.6
Stefanos Tsitsipas in a
thrilling encounter, to become the inaugural champion.
Following the successful debut, Mouratoglou hopes that UTS can become a regular fixture on the tennis calendar as it provides a completely different product to the ATP Tour.
"I think it is much more interesting to have two different products in tennis,” he told Tennis365. “Some of the core tennis fans will watch UTS, but we are attracting a new audience.
"If you look through the figures of the fans we have reached over the last few weeks, the average age of our fans is 30 and 50 per cent of our fans are not always watching tennis regularly. That is our goal. So if we have two completely different products with two different goals it could work. We could operate at the weekends when qualification is on for tournaments, so maybe the top players could play ahead of the main events. There is a lot of opportunities."
Given the uncertainty of the 2021 calendar due to the COVID-19 crisis, Mouratoglou admitted that the format could be altered in the future. However, he remained excited about the prospect and potential of the event.
"We don’t know what the calendar is going to look like in 2021 with the Covid-19 crisis and all the consequences of it, so there are a lot of weeks that are available and a lot of weeks to do things and that is great.
"This is totally what I hoped it would look like and that is good news because you never quite know whether that is what the product is going to look like when you imagine it. The reality is quite often different, but this time it is very close. Not that this is the perfect product, I don’t think it is, we can still improve a lot, but for a start this is a good start."
On hosting the event in front of fans
"Imagine this event with a crowd… wow, I can’t wait," Mouratoglou added. "There was a lot of tension out there. This is real tennis and they want to win, but they can have fun at the same time. You could see the players relaxing at the changeover and having some fun, but then they want to win really badly when the points are played. That is great.
"The goal of UTS is to offer an immersive format. Tennis is a format where we are far from the players and we see them from the outside. UTS, you are close to the action physically as the camera is there, the sound gets you into their effort and we get into the players’ mind thanks to the commentators and their conversations. We get close to the coaching as we can hear their discussion with the players at the changeover, so this is a very immersive experience and very different."
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