I Surveyed 1,292 Tennis Fans: Here’s How to “Fix” Professional Doubles

In October of 2021, I attended Indian Wells for the first time. I started my doubles podcast a year earlier but was still relatively new to the world of professional doubles. At this point, I’d had a handful of ATP and WTA players on the show but probably couldn’t name more than half of the top 10 at the time.

I remember seeing how much the fans absolutely loved the doubles at Indian Wells. I attended matches on stadiums 4, 5, and 6 that had a far better atmosphere than many of the Stadium 2 singles matches.

I’d walk in and think, why have I barely heard of this team? What if I wanted to follow them throughout the year? What if I became a doubles fan?

For the next several months, I began to understand how unpopular and inaccessible doubles was compared to singles.

• Why is Stan Wawrinka a global tennis star but not Bruno Soares?
• Why is it so easy to watch Coco Gauff and Aryna Sabalenka on TV but not Luisa Stefani or Nicole Melichar-Martinez?
• Why is singles more popular when most adult tennis players and fans play doubles?

It didn’t make sense to me. So I started looking for a reason. Surely there’s some logical explanation for this, and the world’s fourth most popular sport isn’t leaving untold amounts of money on the table. Surely, I thought, they’re not neglecting nearly half of their business.

I’ve been searching for that reason for over three years and still can’t find one that makes sense. So I’ve made it my mission to help make doubles more popular.

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Doubles Survey Results from 1,292 Tennis Fans

Fast forward to Indian Wells 2024. I sat down with ATP Player Council member and recent Australian Open doubles champion, Matt Ebden.

We spoke about the state of doubles, what changes are coming, and what he’d like to see. The following week, Matt asked me if I could do a doubles survey.

I’d done one previously in 2021 with the help of recent US Open doubles champion, Gaby Dabrowski, but in 2024 I had more connections, a larger audience, and a better sense of what doubles might need to become more popular.

I created the questions with Matt’s feedback and surveyed 1,292 tennis fans. You can see the results below, including my interpretation of the story these answers tell us.

I’ve also included my opinion on what changes I personally think doubles needs to become more popular and have a self-sustaining tour. My opinion is based on countless conversations with current doubles players like Matt, his partner Rohan Bopanna, Rajeev Ram, Gaby Dabrowski, Ellen Perez, Katerina Siniakova, Will Blumberg, Neal Skupski, Nicole Melichar-Martinez, Demi Schuurs, Austin Krajicek, Erin Routliffe, and Bethanie Mattek-Sands.

I’ve also spoken with former players like Pam Shriver, Rick Leach, Daniel Nestor, Sania Mirza, Gigi Fernandez, Luke & Murphy Jensen, as well as tennis media like Ben Rothenberg, Matt Futterman, Blair Henley, Joel Drucker, Craig O’Shannessy, and others.

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Who Filled Out the Survey?

First, I wanted to know who we are surveying. Are these people tennis players? Do they play singles, doubles, or both? Or are they just fans? Where are they from?

Nearly 70% of participants play men’s or women’s doubles while over 40% play singles and about a third play mixed. Almost 20% of people don’t play any tennis but just watch the sport.

Almost 60% of our participants were from North America with the majority from the United States. Europeans made up over 20% while Asia was at 10.6%.

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Participant’s Current Behavior

The next step was to understand the current behavior of the participants. I wanted to know how much time and money they invest into watching tennis, both singles and doubles.

These are fairly big tennis fans, with 75% watching at least a tournament per month. This makes sense since they are more likely to take the time to fill out this type of survey. They clearly care about the sport.

Nearly 70% of participants subscribe to a tennis streaming service. In other words, most of our participants already pay money to watch tennis on TV.

Next, I wanted to find out how much doubles these tennis fans currently watch.

Nearly 60% of participants watched 10 doubles matches or less in the past year, with 7.7% having watched no doubles at all (I feel for these folks).

This means that much of our 70% who pay for a tennis streaming service do not regularly watch doubles, but opt for singles instead.

This begs the question, why? And what, if anything, would motivate these people to watch more doubles?

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What do People want from Doubles?

I tried to formulate questions that would determine what might get people watching doubles more than they currently do, while still offering them the option to say that they don’t want to watch doubles at all.

What Would Get You To Watch More Doubles?

The next question was simple. I created the four options based on the most common reasons people tell me they don’t watch doubles. They could also type in their own answers but most chose one or more of these options.

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What would motivate you to watch more doubles on TV? (check all that apply)

• 984 (76.2%) – If it were on TV more & easily accessible, I would definitely watch.
• 333 (25.8%) – If there was a good streaming service, I’d pay for it and watch doubles.
• 338 (26.2%) – If the star players played, I’d watch more.
• 359 (27.8%) – If there were better analysis so I can learn while I’m watching.

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This was telling. It seems people want to watch doubles if it were more easily accessible, but most don’t want to pay for a doubles streaming service. Perhaps, I could’ve phrased that second option a bit better as I didn’t make it clear whether the streaming service would be for doubles only, or offer both singles and doubles.

Most notably, nearly 75% of the people don’t care if the “star players” play. People could check all that apply so not checking this box is fascinating and calls into question the theory that stars are required for people to care about doubles.

More people wanted “better analysis” than “star players”.

The big takeaway though, is people “would definitely watch” if it were on TV more.

Watching Singles vs Doubles

Based on how this survey was marketed (more below), this surprised me a bit.

While most of our participants play doubles regularly (68%) and less than half play singles (41%), singles had a slight edge in this question.

Most people want to watch both with 39% saying they would watch 50% singles and 50% doubles. But 31% would prefer to watch more singles than doubles and only 19% want to watch more doubles than singles.

As a doubles fan, this is slightly disappointing to see, but I believe it would distribute back towards doubles if doubles were marketed more effectively and therefore had more stars. More on that in part two.

What about Mixed Doubles?

Mixed doubles is a fascinating topic that seems to have tons of potential, especially with the rise of women’s sports globally. As Matt Ebden mentioned in our conversation, tennis is perhaps the only sport where men and women can play together.

However, we’ve yet to capitalize on it with mixed doubles so rarely on the calendar. Mixed is basically an afterthought at the four majors. There are occasional team competitions, plus the Olympics every four years, but mixed has yet to find a significant place in tennis.

It’s difficult to say how this could change over time without more mixed events. That said, it was worth including in the survey.

Most people claim they would split their time evenly between mixed doubles and men’s/women’s doubles. However, only 11% would watch mostly mixed doubles.

Would You Pay to Watch Doubles?

This is possibly the most important question of the survey. Would people actually put up $$$ to watch doubles on TV?

Over 71% of people would pay $5 per month or more to watch doubles matches with over 20% saying they would pay $10 or more monthly.

The 28% who wouldn’t pay for a doubles streaming service may still be interested in watching through a streaming platform that offers both singles and doubles. Several currently do but none are of great quality. More on streaming options below.

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Open-Ended Questions

The rest of the questions were open-ended and allowed participants to type anything. I’ve tried my best to parse out the relevant keywords and topics that came up.

What’s your favorite part of watching doubles?

These words showed up the most in their answers.

• Strategy – 196
• Net – 168
• Fast – 156 | Speed – 44
• Rally/Rallies – 92
• Volley – 80
• Tactics – 78

Tennis Tribe is largely a doubles training business with a deep focus on strategy through my newsletter, podcast, and other channels. So it’s not surprising to see strategy come up a lot.

People also seem to love the fast hands at the net, reaction volleys, and certain players…

• Hsieh Su-Wei – 9 mentions
• Gaby Dabrowski – 4
• Rohan Bopanna – 4
• Martina Navratilova – 4. People mentioned loving her as an analyst.
• Matt Ebden – 3
• Ellen Perez – 3
• Bethanie Mattek-Sands – 2
• Aldila Sutjiadi – 2
• Joe Salisbury – 1
• Storm Hunter – 1
• Demi Schuurs – 1
• Coco Gauff – 1
• Jessica Pegula – 1
• Simone Bolelli – 1
• Andrea Vavassori – 1
• Katerina Siniakova – 1
• Taylor Townsend – 1
• Bryan Brothers – 1
• Stefanos Tsitsipas – 1
• Thanasi Kokkinakis – 1

Against all odds, Hsieh Su-Wei wins again.

What’s your least favorite part of watching doubles?

These were the most common words and responses.

• None, nothing, N/A, -, I like it all, zero – 181
• No ad/deciding point – 53
• 3rd set tiebreaker/match tiebreak – 22
• Short points/short rallies – 18+
• Unknown players/Not knowing the players – 15+

People seem to dislike the no-ad format more than the match tiebreak. Some also mentioned disliking the short points.

Many comments were about not knowing the players or needing more media attention and coverage. This is a fair take. At most tournaments, I’m the only person requesting doubles players for post-match interviews while even the lower-ranked singles players typically speak with at least two or three people from the media.

These issues come down to product vs marketing problems which I’ll discuss below.

What would make pro doubles more entertaining?

These were some of the common responses.

• Commentators/commentary – 92
• Star(s) – 58
• More Mixed – 48
• Nothing, none, N/A, it’s already entertaining – 35

Most doubles matches do not have commentators. You often have to go to Tennis Channel Plus 7, 8, or 9 to watch matches, especially in the early rounds. And all you hear is the sound of the ball, the chair umpire, and the crowd.

More stars is solved by fixing the marketing, which isn’t done overnight.

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How We Found the Participants

I marketed the survey through my own audience which consists of primarily adult doubles players and fans. I sent it to my email newsletter, posted on Instagram, Twitter/X, Facebook, and mentioned it in the podcast.

I also reached out to players to share with their audiences. These are, naturally, mostly doubles players who I know through the podcast and covering the tour. Many of them shared on their Instagram stories and through Twitter.

Last, I reached out to connections through “Tennis Twitter”. These are people who mostly cover the singles tour and were generous enough to share it on Twitter/X.

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Flaws with the Study

There is no perfect study and with surveys like this. I see two problems with the way this was done.

1. We are very much relying on the memories and words of the participants. For example, people may not remember exactly how many doubles matches they’ve watched in the past year.
2. The marketing likely attracted more people who are also passionate about doubles. I tried to market it to “tennis fans” rather than “doubles fans” but since my audience and connections are through doubles, we almost certainly got more doubles fans than you’d expect from a random sample of tennis fans.

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My Takeaways & Opinion: What Doubles Needs

The biggest takeaway for me is that people do want to watch doubles more if it were more easily accessible. I may need to create a separate how-to-guide to help people find doubles matches to watch in their country.

In the US, you have to pay for a subscription to watch 99% of doubles matches on tour. Tennis Channel and ESPN probably combine to air around 10 live doubles matches each year.

Tennis Channel Plus and Tennis TV (ATP only) are the two most popular streaming options in the US. I use both, however, they both have some serious issues that make watching doubles frustrating at times and often impossible.

I’ve long said that doubles doesn’t have a product problem, it has a marketing problem.

With what I understand to be no marketing budget, and less than 5% of the social media promotion (a generous number), it’s no wonder that Australian Open champ, Jannik Sinner, would get mobbed walking around the streets of Paris next week while Rohan Bopanna or Matt Ebden might go nearly unnoticed.

For doubles to succeed, I like the idea of shorter changeovers and free fan movement like they tested in Madrid. However, these are still product solutions. And while I was encouraged to see them experimenting and hope it continues, we need better marketing to see a real impact.

One of the most common responses in the open-ended questions was that “we need to get to know the players” or “we want to see more stars play doubles.” I honestly believe with the right accessibility, marketing efforts, and platform, doubles can be nearly, or perhaps, as popular as singles in 10, 15, or 20 years…

As I said in the beginning, I’m searching for a reason why I’m wrong but I can’t find one that makes sense to me.

Comment below with your country and how/if you are able to watch doubles matches. I’d love to know.

The survey is still open. You can fill it out here.

#WatchMoreDOUBLES