US Open’s dating show proves a double fault in search for new fans

On the first day of this year’s US Open, Alexandra Eala came back from 5-1 down in the third set to upset Clara Tauson in front of a rapturous crowd, Novak Djokovic rope-a-doped a fresher opponent barely half his age, Rebeka Masarova hit an overhead smash into the only racket-sized area inside the lines that would ensure she lost the point, and Daniil Medvedev all but incited a riot in the stands of Louis Armstrong Stadium while down match point.

Amidst the overstimulating slate of matches, the US Open quietly published the first episode of the dating video series Game, Set, Matchmaker on their official YouTube channel. In it, host Ilana Sedaka, a figure skater and influencer, had a blind date with Ronnie, a lacrosse coach. They exchanged bright smiles and music tastes. They bonded over their love of Drake – what were the odds? Though the date took place on US Open grounds with players practicing in the background, very little of the conversation concerned tennis. It is Ronnie’s first time at the US Open: “This place is insane,” he said. Slap it on a poster.

“Are you a tennis fan?” Sedaka asked midway through. “I just got, kind of got into it last year,” Ronnie said. At video’s end, Sedaka offered Ronnie a ticket to the US Open so he could join her on a second date. Ironically for a piece presumably intended to generate interest in tennis, it cut off as they walked onto the grounds. The next episode, a charmingly awkward date between influencer Emma and fitness trainer Natalie, featured no tennis talk but 30 seconds or so on the NFL.

The videos begged the question of why exactly the US Open had provided the platform. Per the New York Times, a United States Tennis Association spokesperson’s reasoning for the series was that it is “trying to attract an entirely new audience, reaching fans at the intersection of tennis, pop culture and entertainment”. The trouble is that tennis seems absent in the first two episodes of Game, Set, Matchmaker aside from the backdrop. The videos sputtered to modest viewcounts, outpaced by virtually all of the match highlight reels alongside it on the same channel. It seemed that those who came to the US Open’s channel did so to watch some of the US Open.

It’s difficult to imagine anybody becoming a tennis fan on account of these episodes under any circumstances, but the rollout of Game, Set, Matchmaker couldn’t have helped. The episodes’ release schedule wasn’t readily available, and mere days before the pilot dropped, the format changed from a Bachelorette-style series, in which Sedaka would go on dates with different men, to eight distinct couples on their first dates. (Maybe Ronnie proved an unexpected keeper?) But many fans had less of a bone to pick with the format than the idea itself – why was this relevant to a tennis tournament, again? The US Open set a new attendance record in 2024, welcoming more than one million fans through its gates. Tennis participation in the US is spiking. The overall prize pot at the US Open is up 20% from 2024, itself then a record high. Game, Set, Matchmaker implies a lack of faith in a product that by all appearances is doing very well.

Game, Set, Matchmaker isn’t the first attempt to find new tennis fans by eschewing the tennis of it all. Break Point, the short-lived tennis Netflix series, was cripplingly reliant on player access and allergic to showing tennis footage from a recognizable angle. An episode in which Carlos Alcaraz defeated Djokovic in a pulsating five-set Wimbledon final bizarrely featured Holger Rune as its protagonist. The show depicted the flow of a match as a trio of momentum swings: one player seized the initiative, mentally floundered, then recovered to seize victory. Forehands and backhands were neglected; tactics may as well not have existed. The show seemed geared more towards convincing viewers to follow various players on social media than to watch them play tennis.

As if anticipating their own intense disappointment with Break Point, hardcore fans repeated that they were not the target audience, like a mantra, in the lead-up to its release. This was true; the goal was to create new fans, not comfort existing ones. But too often, this goal is used as an excuse for disappointing existing fans, or presenting a distorted picture of reality. In April, Netflix released an Alcaraz-focused documentary called My Way, presenting his tumultuous 2024 season. Alcaraz won Wimbledon that year when Djokovic netted a backhand return off a second serve. My Way instead depicted match point as a cinematic, hard-hitting rally that ended with Alcaraz demolishing a forehand winner. If Netflix felt it had to embellish the match to the point of misleading the viewer, you wonder why they bothered making the documentary in the first place. Other sports have dabbled in the Netflix treatment, too, in attempts to emulate the wildly successful Drive To Survive. None have matched that success; like Break Point, cycling and rugby docs were canceled.

The mixed doubles tournament preceding this US Open, too, aimed to capture viewers through means aside from the tennis they played. The Open cannibalized the format with singles stars, forcing out almost all of the doubles specialists who had tailored their skills to the format – and who, unlike top singles players, rely on these tournaments to make a living. But even that wasn’t enough. Emma Raducanu and Carlos Alcaraz partnered for the tournament; being young, attractive stars, they were inevitable fodder for fanfiction and shipping. Most would just expect such fantasizing to come from fans, rather than official tournament accounts. The US Open leaned into the partnership, hard, and luckily for them Alcaraz and Raducanu played ball rather than running for the hills. The tactic successfully sacrificed dignity for outsized attention. On one point, against Jack Draper and Jessica Pegula, Raducanu defended a series of attacks only to be passed by a Draper backhand. Thinking the point was over, Raducanu hung her head, and into her peripheral vision raced Alcaraz to rescue the rally with a forehand winner around the net. They laughed delightedly, white teeth flashed. I forwarded such telegenic clips of Alcaraz and Raducanu to my tennis-curious partner, who didn’t watch the tournament but later offered “I ship Emmaraz.” I even caught myself enjoying the pair’s first-round loss.

These style-over-substance tactics are often a slap in the face, either to the mixed doubles players who had spent their lives training for and excelling at the format, or to the hardcore fan. They’re also about fame and fandom more than the sport itself. The film Challengers had many virtues and achieved the rare coup of thrusting tennis into mainstream discourse, and did not shy away from the sport itself. The film returned to the pivotal showdown between two protagonists throughout its runtime, taking care to highlight key moments. We saw the match take shape. We saw the players’ contrasting styles. We saw sweat drip from their bodies. We saw tennis as it was: a prolonged, unpredictable crucible of stress dotted with moments of brilliance. The film ended with players and spectators alike celebrating a particularly spectacular point.

Nonfiction tennis is frustratingly resistant to doing the same, despite a dream cast of stars.

After years of catastrophizing about a world after Serena Williams and the Big Three, a handful of supernaturally talented successors have fallen into the sport’s lap. Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner have taken to playing in the final of every big tournament lately, drawing comparisons to great rivalries of old. Iga Swiatek and Aryna Sabalenka have each enjoyed spells of dominance on the WTA yet have no shortage of talented competitors. When tennis is at its best, people tend to enjoy it. The US Open and other tournaments would do well simply to highlight such instances and do their best to get them in front of as many eyes as possible. If someone isn’t interested in that, tennis probably isn’t for them, and that’s OK, too.