Lovely Laura Bowen, the section's ED served a bunch of softball questions to Mickey Maule (USTA Managing Director, Industry Engagement and Sales) and Bryan White (Executive Director, Tennis Industry Association). Mickey, who I up to now have held in pretty high regard, must have chuckled for not being challenged on anything he was saying. It sounded like he got marching orders from his boss Craig Morris and you know what that means, haha. Bryan White? Oh man, don't get me started. I guess his boss Jeff Williams spoon-fed him the kind of nonsense Craig Morris, Lew Sherr, and the USTA Board like to hear. White seems to know little about tennis. He is the Chief Growth Officer* for his main employer BOSTRUM and he has many more roles. Like, Executive Director for the Illinois Speech-Language-Hearing Association. His former jobs included ED for the National Paper Trade Association and for the Automotive Oil Change Association. His credibility factor for me: I give him a 5 out of 10.

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I mean, Sports Marketing Survey have a pretty good racket going for many years now feeding the TIA and the USTA with data their clients want to hear. It's almost comical. Let's look at some of the things that were said on this podcast.

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LATENT DEMAND
That ever-so-elusive demographic no one seems to be able to capture but everyone is always touting as relevant. Bryan revealed that the relevant question in the survey had always been "Are you interested in playing tennis?" Naturally, lots of people said yes. Then, in 2020 some brilliant survey experts thought it a better idea to ask "Do you intend to play tennis this year?" Naturally, that number went way down because sitting on the couch saying I'm interested is one thing. But then to sort of commit to actually doing it? No siree! So for 2021 they went back to the "interest" question and tried to make us believe it was to be "more in line with golf surveys." Ha, I was born but I wasn't born yesterday. When numbers are low we need to massage them, right? Let's ask questions where we know the numbers will be higher knowing quite well how easy it is to lie sitting on the couch watching TV and drinking beer.

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Then came the kicker: Latent demand is greater than total participation. Hu? When I told a friend, he replied, "Really? If so, how are people finding out about tennis? Certainly, not from watching the Tennis Channel."

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CORE PLAYERS
Well, I meet a lot of adult players every week. Many of them are longtime USTA League and/or World TeamTennis players. No one (do you hear me, Bryan?), no one plays tennis less than 2-3 times a week. Deducting about 20% for rainy days and sickness, that's more than 120 times a year. THAT'S your core player. If I want to be generous, I'd say once a week or 45 times a year, is OK, too. But counting people that play more than 10 times a year as Core? Are you serious? That's as bogus as the entire survey. Makes those core player numbers look so good, doesn't it? I wonder who at the USTA insisted on this massaging of the numbers. Kamperman? Smith? Both?

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They said core players declined slightly. Could that be because many boomers are leaving the sport and retiring or gravitating to Pickleball? So, in Florida, they say, casual players decreased by 2% and core players increased by 2%. Their conclusion: Florida converted casual players to core players. I think, assuming that they conveniently mistook unique players with participation numbers, it's more realistic to think that both groups decreased and went to Pickleball but many core players now play on more teams like everywhere else in the country.

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SAMPLE SIZE
They talked about the TIA survey and its sample size of 36,000 and a two-year rolling average. I asked an expert and he replied, "A two-year rolling average has value, but it can distort the data by taking the volatility out of it. You won’t see turning points. That is the value of good data. It sounds like they are having fun trying to find answers to questions that may or may not exist. It sounds like they are little boys playing with their toys. The key thing is the quality of the sample, not whether it is 18,000 or 36,000."

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My take: The entire podcast shows me again: No one has a clue what the numbers really are. Everyone wants to massage and interpret them to look much better than they think they are but know they aren't. (Reminds me a little of that brilliant sketch from the Carol Burnett Show). They can slice and dice the data all they want. It doesn’t mean anything unless there are more courts and more coaches. What are you guys doing to build more courts while you are so eager to be in bed with golf? Oh btw, the podcast lasted 45 minutes and they went out of their way not to mention Pickleball. I wonder why? It seemed that golf was in every 3rd sentence but no P-word.

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So, this entire podcast was a huge Kumbaya show as if all is great in tennis. Our readers know better.

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*Btw, Bryan White, as mentioned above, is Chief Growth Officer for BOSTRUM. I looked up the definition of CGO: "Reporting directly to the CEO, the chief growth officer is a senior-level executive responsible for managing the growth of an organization. That growth can either be measured in revenue, users/buyers, or other internal KPIs, depending on the company and its needs." So, I wonder where there's a conflict of interest? Can you see it?