How Women's Tennis Is Selling Itself

The WTA has dressed its star players in luxury fashion to sell its Finals in Riyadh, creating a glamorous new image in a controversial setting.

Ahead of this week’s Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) Finals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in which the top eight tennis players and top eight doubles teams compete against each other in a round robin format for the final trophies of the year, star athletes such as Aryna Sabalenka, Iga Świątek and Coco Gauff (ranked 1, 2 and 3 in the world respectively) were assembled for a luxury fashion photo shoot at the Bab AlSaad Resort, a private venue in Al-Diriyah on the north-western outskirts of the capital.

Saudi Arabia may want to host tennis tournaments for women. Do women want to see Saudi Arabia hosting tennis tournaments? The best part about tennis is that it touches all parts of the globe. Some of those parts are a harder sell than others, for tennis fans. The WTA is becoming savvier about how to sell this. They know Riyadh is a place that needs selling, and they’re doing it in the least controversial and most lifestyle-oriented way they can muster for a women’s sport — fashion.

What’s interesting about sport today is that the audiences grow significantly if you can find the intersection between a sport and other cultural passion point like fashion. By aligning with fashion, tennis is really just creating more desire and aspiration, and opening itself up to a whole universe of new fans. Tennis has long inspired fashion and here are some off-court savvy looks.

The joy and benefit consumers often describe when they engage with women’s sports such as tennis is that they’re not just a carbon copy of the men’s game. Women’s sports often feel more accessible and more inclusive of fans from non-traditional backgrounds.