Tennis Isn’t Having a Moment. It’s Becoming a Media Platform.

The game hasn’t suddenly become interesting. What has changed is the number of ways people can enter its world.

I’ve been around tennis for almost as long as I can remember.

I started playing when I was five years old. Over the years, tennis has been competition, community, friendship, business, travel, frustration, escape—and one of the few constants throughout my life.

It is also part of what eventually led to Bad Boy Tennis.

So when people say tennis is suddenly “having a moment,” part of me agrees.

And part of me doesn’t.

Because tennis didn’t suddenly become interesting.

What changed is how the rest of the world is discovering it.

And that may ultimately be much more significant than a moment.

A New Content Machine Has Arrived

I started thinking about this after reading Jessica Schiffer’s recent Vogue Business article, Inside Tennis’s Booming Influencer Economy.

The numbers alone are remarkable.

In 2025, the US Open introduced its first formal creator credential and accredited 54 creators. According to the USTA, they generated more than 5.5 million social engagements.

At the 2026 Australian Open, 260 creators attended—64% more than the previous year—and generated 348 million impressions.

Research cited by Vogue Business also found that people who actively follow creators are 19% more likely to be interested in the US Open when one of their favorite creators covers it. Sponsored creator content associated with the US Open, meanwhile, generated 48% more impressions than typical creator-sponsored content.

Those numbers are impressive.

But I think the more interesting story is underneath them.

The US Open didn't initially prioritize only tennis creators. Its credential program deliberately included people covering fashion, food, wellness, music, entertainment and lifestyle.

The Australian Open has followed a similar philosophy, expanding the experience surrounding tennis into fashion, beauty, food, gaming, music and other categories.

That tells us something.

Tennis is no longer simply a sport people watch. It is becoming a world people want to participate in.

The Entry Point Has Changed

There was a time when tennis culture largely traveled from inside the sport outward.

You learned about the brands because you played.

You knew the tournaments because you followed tennis.

You understood the clothes, the etiquette, the personalities and the strange little rituals because you were already part of the community.

Today, that relationship is beginning to reverse.

Someone might discover tennis through an outfit.

Someone else through TikTok.

A restaurant at the US Open.

A Rolex.

A celebrity courtside.

A sneaker collaboration.

A hotel with a beautiful tennis court.

A creator walking through Flushing Meadows.

A vintage photograph of Andre Agassi.

Or Naomi Osaka walking onto Centre Court in something that looks closer to high fashion than traditional tennis apparel.

Vogue recently described the emerging tennis walk-on look as the sport’s response to the NBA tunnel walk—another sign that what happens immediately around competition is becoming culturally important in its own right.

And once someone enters through one of those doors, they may begin following a player.

Then a tournament.

And eventually, perhaps, they pick up a racket.

That reversal matters.

For generations, the tennis fan helped create tennis culture.

Increasingly, tennis culture can create the tennis fan.

Tennis Has Something Most Sports Would Love to Own

Most sports have audiences.

Some have enormous audiences.

But tennis has something slightly different:

a world around the game.

Fashion.

Travel.

Wellness.

Food.

Hospitality.

Architecture.

Clubs.

Watches.

Sneakers.

Hotels.

Celebrity.

Design.

Tradition.

Social status.

Community.

And somewhere in the middle of all of it, there is still a tennis match being played.

I don’t mean that cynically.

I think it is one of tennis’s greatest strengths.

The sport moves unusually well between performance and lifestyle.

You can play in the morning.

Go to lunch afterward.

Walk through New York.

Watch the Open that afternoon.

End up at a dinner or event that evening.

And certain visual and cultural codes can move through every one of those environments without feeling particularly forced.

That is incredibly powerful for brands.

It is also something we think about constantly at Bad Boy Tennis.

Our philosophy has always been beyond the baseline—clothing born from tennis but designed to exist in a much larger world.

Not because someone invented the term “tenniscore.”

Because anyone who has lived around this game for long enough knows that tennis culture has never stopped when the match ends.

Access Has Become a Form of Media

One of the most revealing parts of the Vogue Business story is how much brands are now willing to invest simply to participate in the cultural environment surrounding a Grand Slam.

A private US Open suite for a single session can cost roughly $50,000 to $150,000 before adding design, hospitality, production, agency costs or talent. Once creators and celebrities are added, a substantial activation can move into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

That tells you brands aren't buying tennis tickets.

They're buying cultural proximity.

For decades, sports marketing had a relatively predictable structure.

Sponsor an athlete.

Buy signage.

Secure hospitality.

Run an advertisement.

Put the logo somewhere visible.

Hope some of the prestige transfers to the brand.

Now the suite itself may only be one component.

The real product is everything that can happen around it:

Who attends.

What they're wearing.

What they photograph.

Who they meet.

What they post.

Who sees it.

What the association communicates.

A creator attending Wimbledon or the US Open isn't necessarily telling followers, I am a serious tennis fan.

They may also be communicating:

I have access.

I have taste.

I'm part of this world.

That is a fundamentally different kind of value.

And it helps explain why so many brands that have very little historically to do with tennis suddenly want to stand close to it.

They're not necessarily asking:

How large is the tennis apparel category?

They're asking something more interesting:

What does being associated with tennis allow our brand to mean?

Because tennis communicates certain things before a company says a word.

Discipline.

Taste.

Competition.

Wellness.

Tradition.

Aspiration.

Individuality.

Community.

And increasingly, style.

Fashion Is One Expression of Something Bigger

It would be easy to interpret all of this as simply a tennis-fashion boom.

And fashion is certainly part of it.

Vogue's 2026 coverage alone shows how completely tennis has entered the fashion conversation, from US Open spectator style to emerging walk-on looks and increasingly visible relationships between performance companies, luxury houses and designers.

But fashion is not really the whole story.

Fashion is evidence of something larger:

Tennis has become culturally legible outside tennis.

You no longer need to understand a kick serve to understand the aesthetic.

You don't have to know the rankings to recognize the codes.

And you don't need a UTR rating to decide that some part of this world represents you.

That is why companies like Lululemon, Alo and others have been able to move between active lifestyle and tennis so naturally, while heritage houses and independent labels continue interpreting the sport from completely different perspectives. Vogue's current tennis-brand coverage itself now places traditional tennis names alongside broader activewear and fashion labels.

But the smaller brands may tell us even more about where this is heading.

There Has Never Been Just One Tennis Culture

One thing you understand after spending enough years around the sport is that there isn't actually one version of tennis.

Wimbledon doesn't feel like a public court in New York.

A red clay court in Spain doesn't feel like a hard court in Miami.

Junior tennis doesn't feel like Saturday morning doubles.

A private club doesn't feel like waiting for a court in a city park.

Professional tennis doesn't feel like four friends arguing over whether a ball clipped the baseline.

And yet all of it is tennis.

That's important.

Because as the cultural audience around the sport expands, people increasingly aren't simply deciding whether they like tennis.

They're choosing which version of tennis they identify with.

Some are attracted to heritage.

Some to luxury.

Some to nostalgia.

Some to streetwear.

Some to performance.

Some to the social side of the sport.

Some to its discipline.

Some to its rebellion.

Bad Boy Tennis was born inside that tension.

We come from the traditions of tennis—precision, ritual, composure—but we don't believe respecting the game requires conforming to a single interpretation of it.

Tennis is our heritage.

New York is our attitude.

Individuality is part of the code.

There is room for pristine white.

And there is room for black.

There is room for the club.

And for the street.

There is room for tradition.

And for the player who chooses to interpret that tradition differently.

That's not abandoning tennis culture.

It's evidence that tennis culture is alive.

Tennis Is Going Through What Running Already Discovered

There is an interesting parallel with running.

Running was once marketed primarily around performance.

Shoes.

Times.

Distance.

Training.

Then running clubs became communities.

Those communities developed aesthetics.

Aesthetics became identities.

Coffee shops became gathering places.

Brands began organizing runs.

Content followed.

Fashion followed.

Travel followed.

And suddenly a Saturday morning 5K could be fitness, friendship, lifestyle and culture at the same time.

The actual activity hadn't changed.

The ecosystem around it had.

Tennis appears to be moving through its own version of that evolution.

Except tennis enters the process with an enormous advantage:

It already has more than a century of visual and cultural history waiting to be rediscovered.

Grass.

Clay.

Whites.

Wooden rackets.

Warm-up jackets.

Headbands.

Old tournament posters.

Country clubs.

Public parks.

Scoreboards.

New York nights.

Paris clay.

London grass.

Rivalries.

Rebels.

Icons.

Very few sports possess such a deep archive.

The next generation doesn't have to invent tennis culture.

It gets to reinterpret it.

Creators Aren’t Really the Story

This is why I don't think the lesson from Vogue Business should simply be:

Brands need more influencers.

That would be the easiest conclusion.

And probably the least interesting one.

Creators are not the real transformation.

Access is.

They are creating new doors into tennis.

The USTA has explicitly said the objective isn't merely putting the US Open in front of more people; it's growing interest in tennis itself. The Australian Open has seen creators who previously concentrated on completely different sports begin independently following tennis after being brought into the tournament environment.

That's the opportunity.

Someone can discover Carlos Alcaraz first.

Or Coco Gauff.

Or Naomi Osaka.

Or an outfit.

Or a sneaker.

Or food at the Open.

Or a courtside celebrity.

Or a creator.

Or a photograph.

Or a friend who invites them to play.

The entry point almost doesn't matter.

What matters is what happens next.

But Tennis Should Be Careful

There is another side to all of this.

Once marketers discover genuine cultural relevance, we have a tendency to squeeze every possible drop out of it.

More creators.

More gifting.

More suites.

More logos.

More collaborations.

More “experiences.”

More content designed to look spontaneous while an entire team stands behind the camera.

Eventually, something that once felt interesting begins to feel manufactured.

And tennis is particularly vulnerable to that.

Because part of the reason this world is attractive in the first place is that it has character.

History.

Ritual.

Etiquette.

Quirks.

Unwritten rules.

Different surfaces.

Different cities.

Different personalities.

You don't want to modernize all of that away.

The Vogue Business piece makes the contrast with Wimbledon particularly well.

Unlike the US Open and Australian Open, Wimbledon currently has no dedicated creator credential. It has experimented more selectively with creators while remaining protective of the identity of the tournament itself.

That restraint isn't necessarily resistance to change.

It is part of what makes Wimbledon, Wimbledon.

And there is an important lesson there for every brand trying to participate in tennis right now:

If your relevance comes from having a distinct identity, growth should amplify that identity—not erase it.

That applies to tournaments.

It applies to creators.

And it applies to brands.

Especially smaller ones.

At Bad Boy Tennis, we use a similar idea:

Substance over spectacle. Character over conformity.

In an era when almost everything can become content, having an actual point of view matters more, not less.

Tennis Was Always Interesting

So no, I don't believe tennis is simply “having a moment.”

I've been around the sport for too long to believe it suddenly became interesting in 2026.

Tennis was always interesting.

What changed is the number of people being invited into the conversation.

The audience is expanding.

The definition of media is expanding.

Fashion is expanding.

The brands are expanding.

The culture surrounding the sport is becoming more visible.

And perhaps most importantly, the number of ways someone can enter the world of tennis is expanding.

You don't have to grow up playing tournaments anymore.

You can enter through fashion.

Through wellness.

Through travel.

Through creators.

Through architecture.

Through music.

Through friendship.

Through community.

Through New York.

Through a public court.

Through an image that simply makes you curious.

And eventually, maybe you find your way onto a court.

I found that court when I was five years old.

Bad Boy Tennis came much later.

But the belief behind it comes from the same place:

Tennis has always been bigger than the lines that contain it.

And the biggest opportunity in front of the sport isn't simply getting more people to look at tennis.

It's getting more people to discover this enormous world around it and eventually think:

This world is for me too.

That is bigger than a moment.

That's beyond the baseline.