Preamble

September 2020

The economic crisis developed during the 2010s has deeply affected the world. During the most difficult years, sports have helped the people forget about the harsh reality of life. The Romans Emperors used to sum up politics to providing bred and distractions to their fellow citizens. In modern economies, politicians use other distractions for people to forget about their dismal lives. Large amounts of populations have now transformed into “working poor”, people who spend their whole time working for menial jobs without being able to make ends meet. The rest of the population is afraid not to fall into this sort of social and economic trap. They try to forget about the everyday mediocrity and the difficulty at fulfilling their dreams.

Sports are one of the few places where money still flows in large amounts. People are dreaming about entering into sports because it is a way to make good money. Kids and teenagers find also an opportunity to pay for their studies without being trapped into endless reimbursement of risky and expensive loans. They assume that sports also create opportunities to travel and enjoy a funny and easy life. The ones who are not able to perform on the field enjoy watching the others on TV and live. Capturing money for setting up sport events had now become difficult with the economic depression. Competition between distractions becomes much harsher and sports follow the flow. Violence increases; audacity explodes. The terrible fate of not being broadcasted anymore would de facto lead to the extinction of a sport. This Darwinian survival process is not only a matter of making money anymore. It has become a struggle for survival.

Federations lead the game with TV broadcasters. They work very hard in order to preserve visibility and revenues. Most of them negotiate at the same time television diffusion rights and the adaptation of the sports to the audience expectations. Rules evolve.

Today’s TV shows are all more explicit. Until the beginning of the 20^th century, male sports prevailed and tv reluctantly broadcasted female sports. The situation has reversed today. Men love to watch female sports because showing off a lot of skin has become the norm. The most successful shows are based on sex, violence and exhibition. Most of them also introduce humiliation. Federations only care about money: as long it flows, anything goes. Last year, a very serious Italian information channel was in danger of bankruptcy because of a sharp decline in advertising revenues. After a short time and easy negotiations with their shareholders, they decided to have only female staff on air, and demanded that they all work in the nude. Breast and depilated sexes are now available for all to see while the journalists deliver news on geopolitics or economics. Needless to say that audience came back. Other shows are following the lead. The channel being broadcasted in high definition standard has even positively impacted the sales for 4K+ TV sets. Censors and the TV content rating offices have now given up trying to protect minors against the exposure to nudity and sex. X-rated movies and shows cannot be discriminated because of pornography or nudity because they are everywhere on display. Intercourse is also easy to watch on TV shows, whatever the purpose and the thematic of the program.

Tennis is no exception in the crisis affecting sports.

There always was some preference for male tennis and the female tour was always demoted to specialized channels or pay-per-view on-line systems. After a 5 years long crisis, the officials in charge of women’s tennis confronted a critical situation: even the most important events on the tour had it difficult to find sponsors and broadcasters. The players had it even more difficult: most of them did not earn enough money to follow the tour and pay for basic expenses. In five years, price money had divided by a factor 8. Time had long gone where Grand Slams tournaments granted a 1 million dollars paycheck to the female winner. Once upon a time, Grand Slam tournaments distributed more than twenty million US dollars in price money to male and female players altogether. Today, each of the five Grand Slams at most gives two Grants to the female winner. Players active during the whole season earn their money with sponsors. The volume of professional tennis players tends to decrease in very high proportions. The female tennis federation assesses that less than two hundred professional players worldwide cover their expenses. Most players do not have any staff anymore. Physios and coaches are sometimes made available via the national federations and they only travel to the main important events on the tour. Most players remain in the tennis business because they cannot select any other activity for a job.

The world tennis federation has compared lots of options. For months they searched for adequate comparisons with other sports and with other businesses. Discussions with players turned out fruitless and irrelevant. Interactions with sport broadcasters always led to the same conclusion: “Find new ideas and we will test them on the audience”. They also gave the same advice: make it kinky (sexy is not enough, there is already too much of it) and violent (the audience loves to watch people humiliating themselves). After touring various countries, tennis officials remain however confident about the possibility to attract enough players. They have learnt that any major change will have the current stars of the tour flow away yet new players will also show up because sports still remain an easy choice against most of other jobs.

With their own research, there is only one single comparison that officials have found relevant for tennis. They watched innovations introduced by the Northern American federations in charge of female football in the late 2000s. Girls were asked to play in lingerie: lace panties, bright colors, stockings, lace bras, some make-up. During a couple of months, it had been possible to make solid money without relying on any actual sport, just on exhibition. The audience, almost 99% male, only connected to watch cute girls running after a ball in lace undies. Adverts were often painted on the players’ bodies. The TV audience has vivid memories about close-ups on transpiration pearls glistening on the smooth skin with strategically located sponsors logos. Games were a total nightmare for anyone interested in sports. The tactics did not focus at all on scoring or on winning the games. They were almost limited to displaying the cutest players. After a couple of weeks, the content was so poor that the audience began to switch to other programs. Organizers succeeded at first at preserving the events and the audience in reducing further the coverage of the underwear adopted as gear. They used transparent bras and t-back thongs. It was still not enough. When they tried to introduce teardrop panties or demi-bras outfits, TV broadcasters stopped the overbidding process.

It came to an end because TV broadcasters and audiences were not yet ready for such shows. Ten years later, the tennis federation knows that limits can be now pushed further. They expect to follow the same strategy. They do seem to know no limit to save the tour. The first step in the evolution relates to basic evolutions in the regulation outfit on court. The second part of innovation links the scores of the games with exhibition and also public humiliations.

The federation never contacted the players for any sort of negotiation.

It only installed information sessions to make sure that everybody was aware about incentives and price money.

Most officials do not believe themselves that they might save the tour beyond one season, but they want to give it a try. Additional price money mostly applies to smaller events organized during the season: the total price money awarded to players multiplies by a factor 5. All this money is injected by tv producers and cable networks to increase interest for female tennis. They learnt from female football that they cannot last without some sport.

Define “some”...

That is the whole point.

New rules enter into force in January 2021.

Tennis has a world audience, but Europe and Northern America still have the largest live and TV audience. With the season beginning in Australia, practices and mentalities have a chance to adapt before the tour hits the USA and Europe in spring. This leaves a couple of weeks available for players to adapt to the rules, and eventually for organizers to replace all those players who might drop out. The federation wants to make sure that no big scandal will arise after they leave the Pacific. The six initial weeks of the tennis circuit are secluded enough for preserving some intimacy around the adaptation of players.

Here are the rationales for the new rules.

Players have to wear sneakers and a bandana all the time. The bandana will either show the federation logo and name, or the name of a personal sponsor who will also spend some money on the federation.

Dresses and shorts are now banned.

Players will now use short polo shirts, with inserted bras and loose support. Belly buttons will always be visible. Bottoms are only a thong and a pleated micro-mini-skirt. The rules introduce precise length references for skirts, to be checked by the umpire before starting the match. The skirt covers the top of the ass crack. The skirt is so short that the lowest part of the thong is supposed to show. The umpire is supposed to use a ruler or a whip to make sure that skirts are not too long. If the skirt is lifted when positioning the ruler between the tight and the exterior of the sex lip, the player will suffer a full game of penalization and will have to drop the skirt before playing the match.