Billie Jean King calls for change to tennis' love scoring system

Billie Jean King wants tennis to change its traditional scoring system to attract the next generation of fans.

The use of the word love to mean zero and points in an order of 15-30-40 has been used in tennis for centuries, but the multiple Grand Slam winner believes it is confusing to younger fans.

I want to make it easy for the fans. I think it should be 1-2-3-4 and not 15-love, 30-love, said King BBC Sports. If you're a kid, I'm not from tennis, what the hell does that mean? If we want to get eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve-year-old kids involved in our sport, we have to make it accessible to them, not to a sixty-year-old fan.

King also wants more attention to be paid to personalities in tennis, with players' names being put on the back of their shirts or tops, as in football and, more recently, rugby.

Tennis is the latest sport to consider the future of tennis and how it can appeal to the coveted younger generation. Cricket introduced the Hundred, Formula 1 attracted a younger audience to the sport via Netflix Drive to surviveand now King has proposed similar measures for her sport.

Novak Djokovic warned in July that club tennis has become what it is threatened by the rising popularity of padela hybrid between squash and tennis.

It has become one of the fastest growing sports in the world, with an estimated 30 million players worldwide, and the former world number 1 explained his fears that tennis was at risk of being displaced. But padel uses the same scoring system as the traditional game, and that hasn't hurt its increasing popularity.

Tennis has already taken steps to attract a new generation. Breaking pointwhich appeared in two series on Netflix, has followed some of the world's best players, including self-proclaimed bad boy Nick Kyrgiosthroughout their calendar year, with an emphasis on selected tournaments. However, unlike Drive to surviveit was not a great success and was not renewed for a third series.

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Tennis doesn't have to change to attract fans

Tennis participation, at least in Britain, is not under immediate threat, nor is the sport alienating its fans.

Wimbledon has remained an essential part of the British summer since its inception almost 150 years ago, inspiring children every year to pick up tennis rackets and head to their local clubs.

Over the past five years, annual adult participation has grown by 48 percent to approximately 5.5 million people, with just over 10 percent of the adult population playing at least once a year.

Padel is growing exponentially around the world, with an estimated 30 million participants, and uses the same scoring system, so the argument that tennis needs to fundamentally change to attract new fans is flawed.

Removing words that have become inherent to the sport, such as love or deuce, would ultimately diminish some of the sport's uniqueness. Furthermore, it is a mistake to suggest that younger people are incapable of learning just a handful of terms.

Badminton and table tennis use a numbered scoring system, with matches played to a certain number. It's simpler, but they don't attract the same following or participation as tennis.

A game of tennis, like the one in the Wimbledon final in between Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic in 2023 lasted 26 minutes and felt like a microcosm of the match itself, is something worth cherishing rather than simplifying.

Netflix was Formula 1's tool for attracting the next generation, so perhaps documentaries or social media should be the focus on tennis, rather than trying to change what made it so successful: the game itself.

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