TIA UK Publishes First Collaborative Tennis Health Check for British Tennis

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: See info below


08/13/10 - After several years of debate, the Tennis Industry Association UK has persuaded several statistical authorities to collaborate together to establish a regular Health Check for British tennis.

Entitled ‘The Health of GB Tennis’, the report is the result of the collation of available information held by the Lawn Tennis Association, the Tennis Foundation, Tennis Scotland, Tennis Wales, Sport England, the Department for Children Schools and Families and IFM Sports Marketing Surveys.

Until now there has never been shared, public, on-going tracking of numbers on players, frequency of play, ball and racket sales and so on to indicate whether British tennis is growing or in decline.

With the introduction of Sport England’s Active People database, the LTA’s own research into the sport and the tennis industry’s collaborative data, it is now possible to collate and publish relevant data to help determine the health of the sport.

The aim is to track available data consistently over a number of years to see how tennis performs as a sport in these islands. In Year 1 the TIA UK is benchmarking the indicators and gathering information from a range of authoritative sources. Additional criteria may be added during the year and data will be published in Year 2: 2011; to indicate whether activity is going up or down.

“I am delighted that everyone agrees on the merits of having a regular Health Check report available for our sport,” said Ian Peacock OBE, President of the TIA UK.

“It will form the basis of on-going research and collaboration that can only be good for the stakeholders in British tennis and I am certain there will be many useful spin offs in future.”

The TIA UK Research Project is headed up by Phil Sandilands (TrioPlus Ltd) who has been working closely with Sophie Curthoys (Lawn Tennis Association), Tony Scott (IFM Sports Marketing Surveys) and Gilly English (Executive Administrator, Tennis Industry Association UK) over the pooling of resources.

“We believe the TIA UK is well placed to act as the clearing house for available statistical data in much the same way as the US TIA works closely with the United States Tennis Association in this area,” observes Phil Sandilands.

“We hope this will lead to a wider co-operation that will draw in all sectors into research in the sport. The next step is to directly engage the industry and the major brands to provide more detail.”

It is hoped to publish the ‘Health of GB Tennis’ report on a regular basis and the first edition already reveals some interesting facts and figures:
• Nearly 1 million people play tennis once a month
• There are 23,000 tennis courts in the UK
• 79% of schools now offer tennis in England
• Around 600,000 tennis rackets were purchased in Great Britain last year
• Some 1 million dozen tennis balls were purchased in 2009

“There is a clear demand for accurate statistics on our sport and to have these readily available for comparison purposes,” said Steve Matthews, Chairman of the TIA UK who is also an LTA Councillor.
“This collaborative effort will have many useful applications for tennis businesses, the media, students of the sport and anyone who is interested in plotting the game’s progress over the coming years.”

For more information contact:
Phillip Sandilands
TrioPlus Limited
Suite 107, Capital Business Centre, 22 Carlton Road, South Croydon CR2 0BS
Phone 020 8398 3232
Email psandilands@trioplusonline.co.uk

Gilly English
Executive Administrator
TIA UK
PO Box 238, Tadworth, Surrey TD20 5WT
Phone 01737 817 895
Email gilly@tiauk.org

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