A Fuller February

On Monday I mentioned that it’s officially the slow—very slow—season in North American sports. Football is over until the fall. Hockey and pro basketball are plodding through their interminable regular seasons. College basketball is in a holding pattern until the NCAA tournament begins next month. Baseball’s spring training coverage is currently focused on a guy who drives a different $300,000 sports car to practice every day. Without the NFL, many of us are left wondering what we’re supposed to do with our Sundays. Go ... shopping? Have ... brunch? Ex ... er ... cise?

You might think that the U.S. sports media, in this time of desperation, would turn to tennis to fill the void. You would be wrong. The lengths that my sports-news show of choice, ESPN’s "Pardon the Interruption", goes to avoid mentioning tennis never ceases to amaze me. The two hosts have spent the last month speculating about NBA trade deals that never happen and wondering if the commissioner of the NFL is overpaid. They’ve marveled at a hockey goalie’s save in a minor-league game and debated whether Rory McIlroy lifts too many weights. They’ve even spent a few minutes discussing soccer—for two middle-aged Americans, that’s stooping pretty low.

Apparently, tennis was still a step too far down the ladder. Wasn’t Juan Martin del Potro’s first match in 11 months worth a few seconds of airtime? He is a former U.S. Open champion, after all. What about Serena Williams pulling out of two straight events? Not a word of speculation about the health or future of the world’s most famous female athlete? The success of 18-year-old American Taylor Fritz? Isn’t he, a potential new homegrown star, exactly what ESPN has been waiting to see for the last decade?

I get it, to a degree. In the U.S. there’s football, and there’s everything else. Tennis, with its globe-spanning sweep, is difficult to fit into prime viewing time in the States. That would seem to be especially true in February, when (a) the sport’s marquee names are mostly on the sidelines, and (b) tournaments are scattered across three continents and multiple time zones. And yet, having spent the last three weeks with my TV stuck mostly to the Tennis Channel, I’d say this was one of the best months that the sport has ever had on television.

For that we can thank “Center Court,” a daylong show that the network began airing in 2014. The concept is simple: Rather than broadcast one match or one tournament at a time, "Center Court" rotates between all of them, while a set of commentators—Paul Annacone, Tracy Austin, Brett Haber, and others—calls the matches from the Tennis Channel’s Southern California studios. This year, the network front-loaded the weeks that it runs "Center Court", moving some of those broadcasts up from October to February, when there are fewer tournaments in Asia and more matches that can be shown during the day in the U.S.

It was the right move. This month tennis’ global flavor has, for once, has felt like an asset rather than a liability; in the "Center Court" format, the game’s reach no longer exceeds its grasp. Last week the show took viewers from Dubai to Marseille to Delray Beach to Rio de Janeiro. This week we've been shuttled between Dubai and Doha early in the day, and sent west to Acapulco in the evening.

In this sense, February’s slew of smaller events have been turned into one wide-ranging tournament, and the sport’s variety of surfaces and styles have been made visible. The cozy indoor confines in cold northern cities like Rotterdam and Marseille gave way to the laid-back beach-town vibe of Delray Beach, which in turn gave way to the sultry evening buzz that characterizes South America’s Golden Swing. The sport—how it’s played, how it looks, how it’s received—is a little different in each place.

"'Center Court' has been one of our most successful endeavors," says Jeremy Langer, the Tennis Channel's head of programming. "We've seen year over year ratings go up 45 percent. I think people are hungry for a presentation that's more than just, 'Here's the match.'

"We're able to connect all the dots with 'Center Court,' and tell this whole season-long story arc."

That story arc feels more significant simply for being told. This year, February—the old dead season, the old appearance-fee season—has felt overflowing, especially with young talent. Two weeks ago we watched four 18-year-olds—Alexander Zverev, Fritz, Belinda Bencic, and Daria Kasatkina—go deep at events, and 22-year-old Dominic Thiem beat Rafael Nadal in Buenos Aires. Last week we watched del Potro return in Delray, Nick Kyrgios sprint to his first title in Marseille, and Nadal go down in another close defeat, this time to Pablo Cuevas. While the women’s side has been wildly unpredictable the last two weeks, the fact that every round of Dubai and Doha has been on the Tennis Channel has meant that it’s been possible to see every upset.

In this sense, tennis on TV in this country is catching up to its presence online. For younger viewers, being able to see virtually any match on a live stream or a service like TennisTV is nothing new or noteworthy. Many of those viewers have complained that the Tennis Channel doesn’t show early rounds, doesn’t show enough matches live, and saves others for its premium-priced Tennis Channel Plus package. All of that has been true in the past, but not this month.

Over the years, the network has built up its presence at the Grand Slams, but during most non-Slam weeks it has the sport to itself.

"We feel like the rest of the regular season is this un-mined diamond," Langer says.

In January, the Tennis Channel was bought by Sinclair Broadcast Group, a company that owns more U.S. TV stations than any other, for $350 million; the deal was approved by the FTC on Thursday. The hope is that Sinclair’s bargaining power will put the Tennis Channel in more cable lineups, and in more homes, and that there will be more money for live broadcasts.

The template is there in the form of "Center Court," and this weekend the show will close out February with another long weekend of tennis—mornings on the Arabian Peninsula, evenings in Mexico and Brazil. If this continues, maybe that Holy Grail of TV broadcasters, the “casual sports fan,” will pick up on tennis during the slow season after the Super Bowl. Even if they never wise up, though, at least tennis fans in the U.S. know what to do with their Sundays.