Steve Simon, the WTA boss, wants to change the rules of the game. According to Steve no-ad scoring system and the super tiebreak are the key to improve the product.

The attention span is shrinking. SIMON

During an interview in Wuhan, Steve explains why he intends to change the scoring system

“The attention spans of the audience today is shrinking. Everybody wants it in very short nuggets and to see somebody sit for two to three hours and watch anything anymore is getting harder and harder.

Our future audience that we need to begin embracing; now if a video is more than 20 seconds it is too long, and they won’t even look at it…

There’s a lot of traditionalists in this sport that don’t like change but sometimes you’ve got to look yourself in the mirror and be honest with yourself. I know that the audience that we’re all trying to gain now, which isn’t in this room, and they’re all watching us on this (points to his cellphone), that audience isn’t going to sit there and watch a three-hour match. Not going to do it.”

The idea

Steve is a big advocate of the no-ad scoring system and the super tiebreak. He said that the format was good in doubles

“The doubles format is where tennis was progressive, at least on the ATP and WTA side, where we’ve gone to two-set matches with no-ad scoring and a super-tiebreak for the third, and you can put your clock on those matches, that they don’t go longer than an hour and a half. They’re 60-90 minutes max. And that’s great,

And I think we need to do that with tennis. It will help us with broadcast; it will help us keep people in the seats – you’re much more likely to sit there and watch that match, that’s going to have a lot more action points too, the no-ad scoring creates drama in the middle of the sets, the tiebreaks…

I think there’s a lot of things that we have to look at in our sport to continue building the interest…”

 

What is the no-ad scoring system?

The no-ad scoring system means that in a case of a 40-all scoreline, the following point will decide the winner of the game. The returner will choose where the point has to be played (deuce or ad-court). 

This system gives a clear advantage to the returner especially in doubles if one player is much better than his partner.
 

What is the super tiebreak

The super tiebreak replaces the 3rd set. It’s simply a long tiebreak at 10.