‘Ugly, boring, horrible’: Fans vent their fury over latest makeover for women’s tennis – but despite the ordeals of Iga Swiatek, Emma Raducanu and Elena Rybakina, the sport is flourishing

They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, which is perhaps just as well for the latest attempt to transform the image of women’s tennis.

The launch of a new logo for the Women’s Tennis Association, unveiled this week along with a revamped colour scheme and a fresh rallying cry, has occasioned much chatter among fans, with ‘ugly’, ‘boring’ and ‘horrible’ among the kinder verdicts.

Kristina Mladenovic, a former doubles world No 1 and winner of nine grand slam doubles titles, echoed the wider reaction on social media, questioning the rationale behind a change that has polarised opinion.

‘Wondering how you can come up with this and who approves?’ wrote Mladenovic, above a picture juxtaposing the new green logo with the previous purple version, which featured a player silhouette. 

‘Green and white? No tennis details? What does it represent? Previous logo was so much better.’

It is certainly a departure from the earlier design, which debuted four years ago and was trumpeted as ‘a badge of pride and a reminder of the power of unity among strong individuals’. 

But as any tennis player – or marketing executive, come to that – will tell you, results are all that matter, and in that respect the WTA is in the rudest of health.

In 2024, women’s tennis reached a record cumulative global audience of 1.1 billion on television and streaming platforms, a 10 percent increase on the previous year. 

Prize money rose to an unprecedented £176 million, attendance figures went up 15 percent, and as of last October, the sport’s social media following stood at 6.3 million, a 26% year-on-year increase.

The WTA has been embroiled in a series of controversies recently, from the decision to stage last November’s flagship year-end finals in Saudi Arabia, a country with a troubled history on human rights, to the suspension of five-time grand slam champion Iga Swiatek over a failed drugs test the following month. 

In January, Stefano Vukov, the coach of former Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina, was suspended and subsequently banned over an alleged violation of the WTA’s code of conduct, while last month a man who followed Emma Raducanu across four countries was given a restraining order after exhibiting ‘fixated behaviour’ towards the former US Open winner.

Marina Storti, the chief executive of WTA Ventures, acknowledges that the path has not always been smooth since the autumn of 2023, when she took the helm of the WTA’s commercial arm, which was established earlier that year with the help of a $150 million (£119 million) investment from private equity firm CVC Capital Partners. 

But against a background of what is now buoyant growth, the former Sky executive is understandably keen to accentuate the positives – a stance unlikely to be altered by a little online quibbling over logo aesthetics.

‘Every sport will face challenges, but I think it’s important that we don’t detract from the bigger picture,’ says Storti. ‘I think tennis is in incredible health. It’s been great to see audiences growing, attendances growing. 

‘It’s also been great to see, particularly last year, that tennis is more and more at the forefront of culture. 

‘To see, for example, our players on the red carpet with Zendaya and women’s tennis being featured on one of the top shows on Netflix [in the trailer for the series Emily in Paris]. We’re seeing our players on the covers of Vogue magazine in the US, China, Italy, all over the world, [and featured in] Forbes and Time. 

‘We’re seeing more and more the sense of the players being culturally relevant.’ 

Of that there can be no doubt. 

Swiatek, who was pictured alongside the American actress Zendaya in Indian Wells last year, has shown a refreshing willingness to speak out on social and political issues, including the Ukraine war and mental health. 

The same can be said of both Coco Gauff, the American world No 3, and four-time major winner Naomi Osaka, both of whom have weighed in on subjects ranging from gun violence to women’s reproductive rights and racial injustice.

The Tunisian trailblazer Ons Jabeur, a former Wimbledon and US Open finalist, carries the hopes of a people, a country and a continent wherever she goes, having established a host of historic landmarks for Arab and African women.

And to the TikTok generation, Aryna Sabalenka may be better known for her dance moves and fashion preferences than as the world’s best tennis player.

Serena Williams, meanwhile, a 23-time grand slam champion who left the sport in 2022, underlined her enduring cultural relevance with a headline-grabbing dance cameo during Kendrick Lamar’s half-time Super Bowl turn last month. 

The challenge, for a sport that struggles to reach beyond the boundaries of its existing fanbase outside major tournaments like Wimbledon, lies in persuading people to care about its stars on a year-round basis.

‘The big events create attention, but it’s about keeping the share of the audience, persuading those who engage once to be interested throughout the year,’ says Clifford Bloxham, a senior vice-president at leading global sports agency Octagon. 

‘That would come with a superstar, definitely. You see that in football: in certain markets, people are beginning to follow the player rather than the club. I think tennis can be similar. 

‘But when you talk globally, obviously you’re relying on the players to become global superstars.

‘Women’s tennis is still right up there in women’s sports and it has unbelievable potential. But also you’re coming off a generation of people who were back-to-back winners, superstars like Serena and Venus Williams. 

‘Some big personalities have left the game, and it’s really the next generation who need to continue to build their profile.’

With that in mind, the WTA’s new marketing push seeks to convey a sense of stars’ personalities through a series of short social media videos in which players offer a personal take on the theme of the tennis court as a platform for self-expression.

‘This is my stage to play for something bigger,’ says Elina Svitolina of Ukraine, a former world No 3 and Olympic bronze medallist. ‘I’m playing for my nation, I’m playing for my people back in Ukraine.’

Mirra Andreeva, the emerging 17-year-old Russian who claimed the biggest title of her short career at last month’s Dubai Open, is out to ‘define her own destiny’, while for Karolina Muchova, the gifted 15th-ranked Czech, the court is a place to express her creativity. 

‘We really got to know the players,’ says Storti. ‘These days, audiences can tell if something isn’t genuine, so it was really important that we worked with them on the things that they were passionate about, and started to build stories around the athletes.

‘It’s about repositioning the WTA as a global stage for greatness that can captivate fans outside of tennis.’ 

Storti points to a study by the LA-based sports marketing and talent management company Wasserman which found that 72 percent of fans are curious about female athletes outside of their sport, compared with just 45 percent for men.

‘That tells you that you’ve got this opportunity to tell a much broader story, getting the fans closer to the players,’ says Storti.

It might be argued that the emphasis on personal stories is somewhat diluted by an accompanying call to ‘rally the world’ – ‘to unite, push boundaries, and inspire’ – which seems to emphasise collective impact rather than individual inspiration.

But perhaps that is fitting, for athletes in a one-on-one sport like tennis necessarily thrive in relation to one another – something that certain observers believe has happened too little in the women’s game of late.

These critics say a lack of captivating rivalries means women’s tennis has suffered in comparison with the men’s game, where the golden era of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic has produced some of the greatest contests in the sport’s history over the past two decades.

Where are the epic encounters that define the sport’s narrative as the rivalry between Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, whose 80 career meetings between 1973 and 1988 included 14 grand slam finals, once did? Where is the modern equivalent to the enthralling duels contested by Steffi Graf and Monica Seles in the late 80s and 90s, 10 of which came at the sharp end of majors? 

So the naysayers demand.

That may seem rather unfair on Sabalenka and Swiatek, the two best players on the planet. The pair have squared off a dozen times over the past four years – Swiatek leads the series by eight wins to four – and delivered an epic for the ages in last year’s Madrid Open final, where Swiatek saved three championship points before prevailing in a thrilling final-set tiebreak.

But they have yet to meet in a grand slam final – they have twice come within a point of doing so – and experts argue that because Swiatek is from Poland and Sabalenka from Belarus, countries not traditionally regarded as major markets for tennis, they lack the commercial appeal that would help to attract sponsors and increase the visibility of the women’s game.

Storti counters that rivalries offer merely a glimpse of a far bigger picture.

‘Rivalries are just one element of the storytelling,’ she says. ‘Fans increasingly want to get to know the players, the personalities, their stories – and what’s fantastic about the WTA is that we have this incredible array of athletes, true diversity.

‘We’ve got 87 different nationalities, we have a demographic ranging from 17 to late 30s – in the top-20 alone – and we have players who actually stand for something – people like Naomi Osaka, Aryna Sabalenka, Ons Jabeur, Coco Gauff.

‘They’re obviously important role models for their countries, but they’re also engaging with their fans all around the world. 

‘For us, it’s about giving the players the tools and the platform and the stage to tell those powerful stories in an effective way.’

It is also about broadening that stage in geographical terms, a motive that contributed to last year’s controversial decision to take the WTA Finals, which feature the year’s top-eight performers in singles and doubles, to Riyadh.

It was a decision that old hands like Evert and Navratilova balked at, arguing that staging the season-ending finale in the Saudi capital was ‘inconsistent with the spirit and purpose of women’s tennis and the WTA itself’. 

And for an organisation founded by the great American champion Billie Jean King in 1973 on the basis of equal opportunity, it did indeed seem principle had been sacrificed on the altar of pragmatism.

Sometimes, though, the ends justify the means. 

In this instance, that meant a global audience of 78 million – the biggest since the event’s inception in 1972, and an increase of 160% on the previous year’s shambolic edition in Cancún – and a record winner’s cheque of almost $5m for Gauff, who defeated China’s Qinwen Zheng in the final. 

For Bloxham, the decision to go to Riyadh made sense not only in commercial terms, but also for the long-term prosperity of tennis itself.

‘All sport is part of a bigger world, because it’s high-profile,’ says Bloxham. ‘That’s the reality. So you have to be aware of where you fit in in the world, and what’s going on. 

‘It would have made sense to the WTA to play there. Obviously, the challenges of building a spectator base in a country where there isn’t a natural, historic audience means it is going to take a lot longer than going to a market where it’s ready-made. 

‘If you brought it to London, there’s a ready-made spectator base, as we saw with the men’s ATP Finals when they were played at the O2 Arena [between 2009 and 2020]. 

‘But ultimately, if you only go to where you know you’ve got fans already in place, then the game will never grow. 

‘Tennis is obviously a global sport, so there’s a logic to making it even more so.’

And if the occasional controversy is the price to pay for such progress, it is one women’s tennis seems ready to accept.