OOf all sports, baseball holds the title of literature – somewhat arrogantly – and so many writers wax lyrical about the beauty of the game and produce wistful reflections at the end of a season. Consider the quote from the late MLB commissioner Bart Giamatti that baseball is “destined to break your heart” because it begins every year in the spring full of hope and then ends in October, leaving fans alone to face the cold and frost of autumn.
But at least baseball fans have the benefit of their sport continuing into the fall, making the transition from summer much smoother and easier. Plus, baseball fans shouldn’t be the only denizens of our parallel sports universe granted an emotional sick day and wallowing in their postseason blues.
For tennis fans in North America, the symbolic and literal end of summer (and the tennis calendar, for that matter) is marked by the conclusion of the men’s finals on Sunday night at Arthur Ashe Stadium. The final always begins in the late afternoon sunlight (when the roof is not needed), and soon shadows envelop the stadium before darkness falls and the lights are turned on as play draws to a close. Spectators often begin play in a T-shirt and reach for a jacket by the end of the evening as the early fall chill makes its unwelcome incursion, ushering in the end of summer.
And when day turns to night at Ashe, there is a palpable surge of energy that gives the game a very special feel. Of the four majors, the men’s final of the US Open is the only one that goes from day to night – the final of the Australian Open is played under floodlights, while the title matches at the French Open and Wimbledon begin and end in daylight.
But unless this year’s Open final is a record-breakingly long one, Flushing will no longer have that unique all-day atmosphere. Because for the first time in living memory, the men’s final will not start at the usual 4 p.m., but at the less dramatic and sleepier time of 2 p.m. in the afternoon (the women’s final will be played at 4 p.m. on Saturday afternoon).
And one more change: For the first time, ABC will broadcast the men’s final (ESPN will remain the broadcaster for the women). In the Open era, only two networks have broadcast the final – CBS and ESPN. CBS was responsible for covering the event for 47 years, starting in 1968, the first year of the Open tennis tournaments. ESPN took over the event in 2015. By broadcasting the final, ABC keeps it in the ESPN family, as both networks have been under the Disney umbrella since 1995.
At first glance, ESPN’s move to ABC to make the finale available on “free TV” (although there really is such a thing as “free TV” in today’s streaming world) makes sense; after all, ABC is available in 97% of all U.S. homes compared to just under 60% for ESPN, so the number of viewers the finale could reach is significantly higher.
But today is Sunday, and Sunday belongs to football, it always has been that way, and it always will be. In fact, football is such a dominant media force that NFL games accounted for 93 of the 100 most-watched U.S. broadcasts in 2023, according to Nielsen. It’s amazing how powerful the increasingly global NFL juggernaut is.
This will give more viewers access to the game and therefore more casual sports fans the opportunity to tune in to the final – at least that’s what ABC and the USTA hope. However, there is a problem: Because it is broadcast at 2 p.m., the game will overlap with the football games at 1 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.
Until this year, when the men’s final aired at 4 p.m., CBS or ESPN would often wait until all football games had finished at 1 p.m. before the men’s final began. This ensured that only the 4 p.m. games overlapped with the final, so fans who had seen their team at 1 p.m. could switch over and watch tennis. This was especially true for CBS, since that network aired both sports, so fans didn’t even have to change the channel. But ESPN — and now ABC — doesn’t broadcast NFL games on Sunday, so it will be a little more effort for the casual sports fan to find the tennis, as opposed to the seamless transition that existed in years past. When you think about it, the “casual sports fan” is akin to the “undecided voter” in a presidential election — they’re a small but highly coveted demographic.
In the suddenly ancient days of the pre-fragmented media landscape, people of a certain age can instantly recall Pat Summerall’s unique, relaxed cadence as he announced the lineup for 60 Minutes “immediately after the end of this match.” For younger tennis fans, those words were a cruel reminder that the weekend was over and school was back tomorrow. Summerall and CBS were synonymous with the Open for so many years. But unfortunately, that consistency, that regularity, has been gone in sport and in the media in general for some time now.
A whole generation of fans have already grown up spoiled with comprehensive coverage of their favourite sport, and can watch every game or match of the season, something that was unthinkable for those who came of age in the 80s or 90s. But this comes at a price – the consistency of coverage mentioned above has disappeared; it has been replaced, as in so many other areas of society, by an à la carte system. Yes, there is more choice, but we lack the unifying regularity that was once such an essential part of the sporting passion. Except for football, of course. Football is the last live television left in our culture.
The recent Olympics, by all accounts, brought exceptional ratings to NBC’s networks, 79% higher than the postponed Tokyo 2021 Games. So perhaps the streaming system, while still foreign to older consumers, is finally working as intended.
But sometimes I wonder if we are really that much more informed about sports than we have been in decades past. Just as the proliferation of news agencies has not made the general population more savvy about more complicated subjects, so too has sports: While fans have unfettered access to their favorite sport and a wealth of statistics at their disposal, they lack awareness of fringe sports. While it is difficult to prove this quantitatively, just as well-informed was the consumer of the evening news when there were only three networks broadcasting just 22 minutes of news each night, or when ABC Wide World of Sports aired delayed ski or track and field or other “fringe” sports, it seems that the average – yes, casual – sports fan had more of a shorthand for fringe sports.
Whatever the case, the question remains: Will soccer fans be willing to miss half of their team’s matches to watch the entire US Open men’s final? I doubt it.
