Report from Roland Garros: The State of Tennis in France (II)
Part II focuses on the power of celebrity to boost the rec gameFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Liza Horan
330 Third Ave.
New York,
212-682-6829
liza@tenniswire.org
06/05/06 -
This second article in a series focuses on the power of celebrity to affect the recreational game, and the future of tennis in France
Click here for Part I on the history and recent renaissance of French tennis
By Liza Horan, Editor
Paris--The business of tennis was discovered a few decades ago. The tables turned when club contests became open tournaments and players received small cash supplements for their meals. It was all so innocent.
Inflation doesn't account for the blast from a few meager dollars offered to players in Arthur Ashe's day to the
per diem rate of 230 Euros paid by Roland Garros. Players receive this amount each day of play, plus two days after elimination; this is in addition to prize money.
Yet it’s a small expense, really, when those players are the main act for a show that brings in $50 million over two weeks, as it does here. Then again, 14.2 million Euros ($18.3 million) are set aside for prize money.
While ticket sales certainly were boosted by adding an extra day of play by starting on Sunday, the real money is in TV broadcast rights. More live court time means more rights to sell. The first day of play went exclusively to Francetelevisions, which is making this tournament the first sporting event in France broadcast in high definition.
Overall the matches at Roland Garros are broadcast in more than 100 countries and in 19 languages. The good news for tennis development in France, which the Federation Francaise de Tennis (FFT) funds through proceeds from the tournament, is that NBC has extended its contract to 2010, and ESPN continually increases its coverage.
While there’s big money in the rights to broadcast the matches, the real value lies with the true owners of those images—the players. With their world-class talents, quirky personalities, and model looks, the players hold sway over consumers. Their influence is a lure for companies seeking endorsements to sell more product, and for the governing bodies who are trying to get more people playing tennis. Faces are the currency of modern tennis.
Maria Sharapova is the most highly paid female athlete, according to
Forbes magazine. Her prize money winnings—at $952,000 so far in 2006 and $5.6 million overall—are almost negligible next to her endorsement contracts, which are reported at $18 million a year. Despite having the face, talent, story and gumption to warrant that precedent-setting salary, Sharapova agreed to endorse a product for free.
That product is tennis.
She was recruited by the sport’s governing bodies in the United States, the Tennis Industry Association and U.S. Tennis Association, to take part in the “Tennis Welcome Center” initiative to increase the number of recreational players. By allowing her image and words to be used to promote the sport, Sharapova gave the TIA and USTA grounds for a power-charged media campaign
(click for PDF), which includes national newspaper ads and email marketing. Last year the campaign included Venus and Serena Williams and non-tennis celebrities as diverse and Daisy Fuentes and Mike Wallace.
This star factor is one the Grand Slam owners count on to boost the popularity of the sport so they can draw recreational players as well as fans and sponsors to their own tournaments. The profits from the French Open, Wimbledon, the U.S. Open and the Australian Open fund the recreational game. The demand of those fans drives the cost of broadcasat rights. It’s an ever-churning cycle, and the ante’s being upped each year.
In France, Amelie Mauresmo is the most visible, and therefore powerful, tool of the FFT. Richard Gasquet and Gael Monfils lead on the men’s side, and the growing French presence in the upper ranks of the pro tours is significant. Of the 16 men and 16 women that made the main draws in singles, three were left as of Saturday:
- Mauresmo, who could face Sharapova in the quarterfinals
- Monfils, set to play American James Blake in the third round
- Julien Benneteau, who dispensed of No. 11 Radek Stepanek of the Czech Republic and No. 19 Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus
This is the tournament these players were trained to win since childhood when they couldn’t get enough of tennis. Each of them is aware of how they impassion their fellow natives--they can hear it in the courtside chants and applause, can see it in the stands that have no seats to spare, and can feel it in the interview with the local press. And, they get it.
Mauresmo knows the power of tennis stars on impressionable children. She was one of them, so captured by watching Yannick Noah and Mats Wilander battle on TV that her parents ran out and bought her a racquet. She was four years old.
"I started to play tennis watching Yannick Noah," Mauresmo said during the first week of Roland Garros, the tournament she was bred to win. "I was following all the French guys, and I liked Steffi Graf and Gabriela Sabatini."
Now she is the star for whom school kids scream
Allez and chase down for autographs.
"If I can give them a good example, it's great for me," says Mauresmo, who's too shy to admit to being a role model. "I think it's nice to have a Grand Slam in France for this, for all the kids coming (with school groups) on the Wednesdays, sometimes on the weekends, to enjoy the best tennis in the world, but also to support the French. That's what I was enjoying when I was a kid. That's what they seem to enjoy now."
Mauresmo transcends the sport here, just as Sharapova does in the U.S. by chatting on talk shows from NBC’s “The Today Show” to MTV’s “Total Request Live” and posing for
Sport’s Illustrated’s famed Swimsuit Issue.
The Frenchwoman’s reach and celebrity status was such that in 2002, the year she reached the semifinals of both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, her likeness was cast in wax by Grevin, the Paris museum that dates from 1882 [see below for
Amelie: A moment in time].
Tennis in France is helped by the likes of Mauresmo, Gasquet and Monfils, but it’s an easier sell here than in the United States (click here for more details from
Part I of this series). It’s so ingrained in the culture that the FFT reports tennis as the No. 1 individual sport in France. For spectator sports, tennis ranks behind soccer and ahead of rugby, cycling, Formula 1 racing. Stateside, tennis is farther down the list on participation and spectatorship, but it is the only recreational sport that has grown over the last few years, according to the TIA.
The French spectators are set apart from other fans, too. Each Grand Slam tournament has its own flavor, and in Paris the crowd is proud of their own, yet appreciative of high quality play by any competitor.
"It is different. It's the passion--they know about tennis," said two-time champion Justine Henin-Hardenne this week. And, she added, they don’t mind vocalizing. "Sometimes, they distract a little bit the players, but it's part of the game. We know here it's Paris, it's a bit different.
“I had great moments here, especially on the center court. The French crowd always gave me great support. I feel a little bit like home here--that's a great feeling,” she said.
The Belgian may be welcome, but there’s no denying she can’t spur recreational interest in France as Mauresmo, or any other native, can.
“We hope a French man or woman is going to win the French Open because it is very important,” says French National Coach Thierry Tulasne, a former player himself who now coaches Paul-Henri Mathieu. “When we have good results it helps to get the children to play tennis. Everybody knows her--when she plays on Centre Court it is full.”
And when it comes to being a public face for tennis in France, Mauresmo gets it.
"She helps us a lot to have more people in the clubs,” Tulasne says. “She is very nice. She’s playing the game with the media.”
Amelie: A moment in time
Amelie Mauresmo, who was inspired to play tennis by watching Yannick Noah on television, now shares a place in history with her hero. Both players have been captured as wax figures at Grevin, a Paris wax museum that dates from 1882.
She is one of a eight of figures, cast forever in a moment of glory, that are on exhibit right now in the museum’s “sport” room. Brazilian soccer star Ronaldo and French figure skater Philippe Candeloro join her, and previous tennis figures featured include Noah, Leconte, Martina Navratilova, John McEnroe, and Bjorn Borg.
As all personalities who are cast in wax at Grevin, Mauresmo attended a four-hour session at which measurements were taken, hair and eye color were noted, and molds were created for her hands and teeth. The result is a startlingly real copy of the world’s No. 1 player.
The Mauresmo statue is one of the most popular, according to Veronique Berecz, who is Public Relations Manager for Grevin. Other top stars are Charles de Gaulle, Celine Dion and Michael Jackson. The breadth of figures runs the gamut, from Pope John Paul II and Charlie Chaplin to Jimi Hendrix, Alfred Hitchcock, Voltaire and Jean-Paul Gaultier. Whenever possible, which is nearly all the time, actual clothing from the subject is used on the wax figure.
“We just received her new outfit for Roland Garros,” said Berecz, who says the museum receives a set of her apparel from the sponsor whenever it changes. “So the statue looks exactly like her right now.”
Another of-the-moment French sport hero, Tony Parker of the San Antonio Spurs, will be memorialized forever at his peak. He’s scheduled to visit Grevin in July for his measurements.
If Mauresmo does not capture the Roland Garros title, as her hero did in 1983, at least she’s achieved the same as he did at Grevin.
Noteworthy: Grevin’s Hall of Mirrors from 1906 has just been renovated and open to the public on June 13. It’s an almost-circular room with mirrored walls, music and a light show that make for a make-believe world while your visage is cast into oblivion. It is one of Francis Ford Coppola’s favorite visits to Paris, said Berecs, adding that he hopes to replicate this Hall of Mirrors, on a smaller scale, in his wine bar in San Francisco.
For more information:
Grevin Museum:
Click here
