Tennis Channel Chair & CEO Jeff Blackburn’s arrival last year has “coincided with an upswing in ratings and streaming signups,” as the spring season has been the “most-watched in company history,” according to Dade Hayes of DEADLINE. Tennis Channel has full rights to the men’s and women’s pro tours, though it currently has no rights to the four major tournaments. Even so, it is “seeing momentum.” The BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells “jumped 24% over the previous record viewership.” Blackburn said, “Every aspect of my vision, where we go, is to just continue to focus on the tennis, the game of tennis, and let it grow.” Blackburn noted Tennis Channel 2 -- the network’s FAST channel -- is “increasingly just becoming its own network” and is “getting picked up by cable.” Blackburn: “Our subscription app has all of it. And so right when you go into the Tennis Channel app, if you subscribe, you’ve got the main flagship network streaming, you’ve got Tennis Channel 2. Then you have all the replays, you have every court. You can do multi-view. And we have Pickleball TV.” Blackburn said parent company Sinclair “made a great acquisition.” Blackburn: “They did a lot of good things for it on distribution. ... And they made a good decision, I think, to say, ‘Let’s reinvest in Tennis Channel.’ It’s working.” He added that the network is currently “not on the market” (DEADLINE, 4/30).
Tennis Channel sees ratings, streaming gains under Blackburn
