By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Tuesday February 11, 2025
The WTA celebrated a banner 2024 in terms of its rising global audience.
According to the tour, the WTA’s cumulative global audience rose by 10% last year to reach a record 1.1 billion on broadcast and streaming platforms worldwide.
The first year of the WTA Finals in Saudi Arabia also made a significant impact.
The WTA Finals attracted the biggest audience of any year-end finals in WTA history, with a global audience of 78 million, up 160% against the audience for the previous year’s event.
In an email, the tour cited Chinese engagement as a big cause of the overall numbers. The tour recently announced that it is expanding its audience reach in China for the 2025 season following a new deal announced by WTA Ventures and Tencent. The agreement means that Tencent’s digital platforms will offer coverage from every tournament on the Hologic WTA Tour through to the season-ending WTA Finals Riyadh presented by PIF in November, including all WTA 250s, 500s and 1000s, except events played in Chinese mainland.
There are currently five Chinese singles players in the Top 100 of the WTA Rankings headed by Olympic gold medalist Zheng Qinwen.
The WTA says that two-thirds of its global audience is aged under 45, and aded that on-site attendance at WTA events increased by 15% to 3.5 million.
