College tennis is far from mainstream.
Recently, the ITA Indoor Championships—a major team tournament in college tennis, second to only the NCAA Tournament in May—were streamed on the Cracked Racquets YouTube channel. The women’s final between Georgia and Ohio State amassed 2.5K views, while the men’s final between Texas and Ohio State had 9.8K.
The numbers are fairly impressive for college tennis, but not much compared to professional tennis or, more to the point, other collegiate sports. And at a time where money is everything in college sports, where exactly does tennis lie?
Alabama’s 2024-2025 athletics financial report can shed some light. The losses for men’s and women’s tennis combined is roughly 2 million. And while tennis doesn’t bring in as much as other programs, it also doesn’t lose as much as other programs. Along with Swim & Dive, it was Alabama’s cheapest sport—but Swim & Dive lost nearly double the money that tennis did.
Clearly, college tennis can function without the funding that other programs get. But money buys visibility, and the sport is in desperate need of that. Right now, college tennis isn’t accessible; it’s not on TV and it’s impossible to follow the scores without knowing exactly which site to go to for any given university. If these aspects of the game don’t improve, the game isn’t going to grow.
But right now, keeping a team together is expensive. With NIL deals becoming the norm and college tennis players unable to accept professional prize money over a certain amount, universities have to pay if they want to field elite tennis teams. There isn’t room for money to go towards getting college tennis on the screens of sports fans.
The college tennis podcast No-Ad, No Problem posited a solution: betting. That could bring in the needed funds, but it would also bring in a whole host of problems. Professional tennis players are constantly speaking out about the harassment they face from gamblers and often receive hate comments or even death threats on social media. Introducing betting to college tennis could have long-term benefits, but if it comes at the cost of player wellbeing then it simply isn’t worth it.
With potential solutions creating more problems, it’s hard to see the right path; but one place to start is prize money. The lines between collegiate and professional tennis are becoming more and more blurred—with some players skipping important college events to play professional matches—and allowing players to accept all of their prize money could give these tennis programs some breathing room. Reigning NCAA champion Reese Brantmeier filed a lawsuit on this topic, and her arguments are sound. Compared to athletes in more prominent collegiate sports raking in illustrious NIL deals, tennis prize money is nothing.
The bottom line is that college tennis has the potential to be much more than it is right now. With funding, improved regulations, and most importantly visibility, it can become something more than the cheap, low-risk sport on Alabama’s spreadsheets.
Main photo credit: Danielle Parhizkaran-USA TODAY Sports
