ITF Global Tennis Report: Participation hits 106 million in five years
More people are playing tennis than ever before, with the global figure rising above 100 million for the first time.
These are two of the headline findings from the third ITF Global Tennis Report, which was launched today (Thursday). The report is the biggest-ever survey of tennis participation levels, with tennis associations from more than 199 countries feeding data into a snapshot of today’s tennis landscape from once-a-year leisure players to top professionals.
The ITF published the first Global Tennis Report in 2019, based on information from 195 countries. A smaller survey in 2021 involving 41 nations has now been augmented with a survey that comes from 199 national associations, and is backed up by data from independent sources, notably government and commercial agencies, making the findings more reliable.
Among the eye-catching conclusions are:
• Just under 106 million people play tennis at some level across 199 countries, up from 84.4 million recorded in 2019
• The country with the highest number of tennis players is the USA (23.8m), but in terms of percentage of the population, Great Britain is top with 13.4% and Canada second with 12.8%
• Asia is the biggest continent in the world for absolute numbers of players, with 35.3 million, representing 33.4% of the world’s tennis-playing population
• There are 698,034 tennis courts in the world, 91.2% outdoors; 55.3% are hard courts (topped with acrylic paint) and 25.7% clay
“The results show that tennis is very strong after the Covid period,” said ITF President David Haggerty at the report’s launch in London. “In 2019 we set ourselves the task of having 120 million people playing tennis around the world by 2030, as part of our efforts to develop the next generation of players and make tennis accessible to all. The significant growth in participation reflects the proactive and sustained efforts of national associations, supported by the ITF as the global guardians of the game, to expand tennis in a strategic and inclusive manner.”
The report represents a massive operation to glean data from national tennis associations around the world. The data starts from ‘casual’ players who play at least once a year, and considers a player who plays around once a month or more a ‘core’ player. “It is the most extensive and valuable data set in tennis,” says Luca Santilli, the ITF’s Executive Director for Tennis Development, whose department coordinated and produced the report.
There is still a strong reliance on the traditional tennis nations, with 99% of players coming from just 33 countries. But that reliance is slowly weakening, with the ITF targeting various countries it considers have the best growth potential. These include Argentina and Brazil in south America, China, India and Indonesia in Asia, and South Africa.
In Argentina, the national association and the ITF have set a target of increasing the 4.5 million players who currently play tennis by another million by 2030. As part of this initiative, the national association has produced a promotional video ‘Tennis is beautiful’ narrated by the legendary Argentinean stage and screen actor Ricardo Darín.
One apparent blip in the data is that the percentage of female players is down from 47% in 2019 to 40.3% now, despite the fact that the absolute number of women and girls playing tennis has grown by 8.3%. But Santilli urges caution in interpreting the numbers.
“The data we have in 2024 is more reliable than we had in 2019,” he says. “Then, 26% of our data from national associations was reinforced by additional data sources, whereas now 48% of the data has been bolstered by additional sources. It’s therefore possible that we slightly overestimated the level of female participation in 2019. What’s clear from our leading nations is that women and girls make up around 45% of participation, which means there’s still work to do, but the situation is not as stark as the 6.7% fall makes it seem.”
From its own research, the ITF has identified the need for more female coaches (the report shows just 24.3% of tennis coaches are women) as a way of achieving gender parity. Among the people it has talked to is Judy Murray, a highly respected coach in Great Britain and the mother of two Grand Slam champions (Andy Murray in singles, Jamie Murray in doubles). “She made it clear to us that girls need to be taught differently than boys,” says Santilli, “for example, girls see tennis more socially than boys, so this is an area for us to work on which will hopefully reveal more progress in 2028.”
Santilli also believes there is scope for the lifestyle benefits of tennis to drive further growth in participation. Around 45% of players in developed countries cite the health and social benefits of tennis as a primary reason for their participation, and the ITF has publicised a 2018 study from the University of Copenhagen which shows tennis as the healthiest sport in terms of prolonging longevity, adding an estimated 9.7 years to the average life, compared with 3.5 for swimming and 3.0 for jogging.
The report will be used for making informed decisions about where to target investment in tennis, as well as a benchmark for measuring the success of initiatives aimed at growing the game. The ITF has committed to publishing the Global Tennis Report every four years in the same years as the summer Olympics and Paralympics, which means the next report is due in 2028.
Summary of key findings can be found here with access to the full report on the ITF Academy.