John Farley Spotlight: A Letter to Steve Simon, WTA CEO

Dear Steve,

I want to congratulate you on the direction you are taking the WTA. With the level of attention now on women's tennis, it is obviously time the WTA had its own media platform, able to control its global broadcasting. I remember reading some announcement at the end of last year that with the new platform we will be able to see all the WTA tournaments and have the option to view multiple courts. Mouthwatering words to me. However, not apparent is a defendable reason for the delay of the launch of the media platform. The delay is now into the 2nd quarter of the year. There has been a troubling lack of transparency coming from the WTA regarding this delay, which leads me to believe there has been a breakdown in the coordination of the parties that had to come together to make this happen. I and your subscriber base, current and future, don't know. We are bewildered. Let's look at this a little more closely.

You were quoted last year as saying, "We're embarking this year on an initiative that is a long time coming.." Well you can say that again. It is May 8, the Mutua Madrid Open has begun, Rome and Roland Garros are just around the tennis season corner, and the WTA Media Platform, which was due to be launched and operational by January 1, 2017, is still not up. You described this time as a "dark period" of "short-term" pain. I have to tell you Steve it's not short-term anymore and many computer, mobile device, and TV screens of tennis fans are darker than ever from a want of tennis tournament matches. One WTA announcement encouraged fans to "stay tuned." Stay tuned to what - pirated or illicit on-line streams or betting sites? (On my computer, I watched Mladenovic and Sharapova in Stuttgart on a betting site that displayed the betting odds on each player in the upper right-hand corner. It was very interesting to watch the odds change from just point to point. The visual of the match was what I would describe as staccato-choppy)

You also said the "gap in streaming coverage was unavoidable," and that a "bumpy transition was inevitable." This I don't understand - unavoidable and inevitable?  Why? The contract with PERFORM, one of the world's leading digital sports content group, was set over 3 years ago to kick in the beginning of 2017. You knew 3 years ago you had to be ready at the beginning of 2017. The five-year, 30 country television deal to begin January 1, 2017 with beIN Sports was cut in April last year and announced during the French Open in May, a full 8-9 months before you knew you had to be operational by the end of the year. With all that time to coordinate all parties and all operational dynamics for the January launch, why was a gap unavoidable and inevitable?

In October of last year you said, "We're in the first step. We just put our toe into the water of this entire project..." What? The WTA was just in a first step then when long ago it made the commitment to launch January 1?" We just put our toe into the water..?" I would have thought that toe would have been put in years ago really, and that you should be by now trying to keep your head above water working out any kinks from the launch.

To get some answers to my questions and to get clarification on the WTA's situation, I called your US Headquarters in St. Petersburg and was told the launch team was led by a woman in your London Office. (I won't mention names) I emailed her with my questions on February 6, 2017. After patiently waiting 10 days or so and having got no response, I again called your St. Petersburg offices to see if someone there could give me some answers. I got back a robo email from "information" a few days later (Feb. 16) describing how wonderful the new site will be ("thrills, suspense, and fun moments on and off the court") and to be patient, for it will all be worth it. So in trying to get some relevant input from the WTA for my post, I got essentially nothing, which seems to be consistent with a nonchalance other writers of the tennis scene have noticed in the WTA's public relation responses.

I like to keep things in perspective. We live in a world of geopolitical upheaval, alternative facts, virtual realities, governments governing through social media, and other dangers and absurdities that form our experiential landscape that calls to us to do something that will change these trends toward the creation of a better world. In that context, missing the matches of a few professional women's tennis tournaments is not such a big deal, but it's nice to have the enjoyment of that distraction.

I think it's time to come clean with the patient tennis fans who will be forming the subscriber base of your new media platform and with the many broadcast commentators and sports writers who present the WTA action to the world.  Come clean means to explain the reasons the WTA was not ready to launch the platform on January 1, why, well into 2017, it is still not ready, and to provide a realistic date for the launch. I realize bringing many parties together to accomplish your goal is and has been a delicate endeavor and only so much information can be divulged, but certainly within that context you can provide some explanation to end this lingering bewilderment among your fans. We are eagerly awaiting your announcement.

Best wishes for a successful launch, respectfully,

John Farley


PS: I recently read a tweet by Jon Wertheim: "Tough questions for Steve Simon..." Jon was referring to an interview you had with Mary Carillo. I watched the short interview. The "tough" questions she asked, as you may remember, were in regard to players grunting and on-court coaching. I tweeted in response: "The tough question to S. Simon is why isn't the WTA Media Platform operational that was due to be up Jan.1."  I got a robust response from the twitter community agreeing with me. They want answers Steve, not appeasement.


Anyway, that's how I see it.