ITF Global Tennis Report now available on ITF Academy
The ITF’s latest findings about worldwide tennis participation and performance are available in the ITF Global Tennis Report 2021, a 248-page document which evaluates data obtained from the 41 countries that make up 90% of the world’s players, coaches, courts and clubs.
The participation data in it originates primarily from 2020 while the performance data comes from 2019 owing to the effects the Covid-19 pandemic had on the professional game in 2020.
This is the second ITF Global Tennis Report. The inaugural report, published in 2019, used data collected in 2018 from 195 national associations in the largest survey of worldwide tennis participation and performance ever undertaken in the sport.
The aim of these reports is to track progress and identify changes to the global tennis scene. Going forward the report will be published in every Olympic year as the ITF endeavours to meet its target of having 120 million people playing tennis by 2030 in what we call our ‘30 by 30’ objective.
The 2019 and 2021 editions are now available for download by all registered ITF Academy users. To find out more, click here.
The latest report identifies that participation numbers have risen in the 41 selected countries with over 87 million people playing tennis, an increase of 4.5% on the first report. This means 1.71% of their population played tennis at least once in a 12-month period.
Ninety-five percent of these 87 million people come from 16 nations, 59% are male and 41% are female. Over one third of these players (33 million) hail from Asia while Africa boasts the most gender-equal split with 50.3% of its players being female. This gender data will help the ITF structure the next phases of its Advantage All gender equality campaign.
One of the biggest increases since the previous ITF Global Tennis Report is the number of tennis clubs reported, which has almost doubled to 115,584 since 2019. Over 80% of these clubs are in North America and Europe – almost half are in the former.
The recorded number of tennis courts has also risen by 28% to 578,671 which means there is a tennis court identified for every 151 people in the world. The Oceania region has the highest proportion of tennis courts relative to its population but over 93% of tennis courts are found in either North America, Europe or Asia.
According to the findings, there are 149,110 national association-certified coaches across the 41 countries - an increase of 6.9% on 2018. The majority of these coaches (59.9%) are registered in Europe and consequently Europe boasts the highest proportion of coaches relative to tennis players (253 players to every coach).
Just under a quarter (22.3%) of coaches are female and it’s Asia that leads the way with 28% of its coaches being women, slightly ahead of Oceania (27.4%)
While the gender split of players at junior level is fairly even - 3,572 male players and 3,703 female players - the difference in the professional ranks is more remarkable. The number of male players with a professional ranking in 2019 was 2,137, compared to 1,482 on the women’s side. More analysis will be undertaken to fully understand the reasons for this disparity.
The majority of these players at both junior (46%) and professional level (58.8%) came from Europe and they subsequently made up the largest percentage of players ranked in both the top 100 and top 250 at junior and professional level.
In 2019, Europe was also the most represented region at Grand Slam tournaments with 55.1% of junior players and 65.2% of professional players coming from there. USA was the most represented nation with 16.9% and 13.4% of players respectively.
The data also explored the age of professional players ranked in the top 500 on the ATP and WTA rankings. Almost 60% of the male players were aged over 25, while the figure was lower on the women’s side at 48.6%. More than 90% of male and female players were aged between 19-32 years old.
To download the ITF Global Tennis Report via the ITF Academy, click here.