LTA & Tennis Industry Association UK cement relationship

The LTA is the national governing body for tennis in Britain with a vision to open up tennis to more people, while TIA UK brings together companies, clubs and individuals with business interests in tennis as the official not-for-profit trade body for the UK tennis industry.

The agreement includes collaboration around and promotion of:

• Annual Club Business Report published by TIA UK
• LTA Webinars for venues in Autumn 2020
• TIA UK’s Business Tennis Forum and the LTA’s Regional Club Forums beyond 2020

The relationship will see the organisations collaborate to provide enhanced practical support to larger tennis clubs in Britain, with an emphasis on sustaining and growing their businesses. As part of this, the LTA will be supporting TIA UK’s Large Club Business Report, which aims to benchmark tennis club performance and help increase club profitability, with the ambition to get more large clubs participating in the next report.

The 2020 Club Business Report has now been published by TIA UK and is available to download from the LTA website. The two organisations will be working together to use some of the learnings from the report to set up webinars for venues. These will form part of a calendar of virtual club forums being organised by the LTA later this year for venues of all sizes, covering topics including membership growth, governance & management, financial sustainability, membership retention and programming and court utilisation.

The virtual approach to venue engagement this year has been implemented following the coronavirus pandemic. Beyond 2020, the LTA and TIA UK will work closely together on staging TIA UK’s Business Tennis Forum that brings together clubs, companies and brands from across the tennis industry and the LTA’s Regional Large Club Forums, with these events to be held on alternate years.

Developing the relationship further, both bodies will be actively considering other collaborative opportunities, including identifying and highlighting innovative products and services that will benefit tennis in Britain in line with the LTA’s mission to make the sport more relevant, accessible, welcoming and enjoyable.

Abbie Lench, the LTA’s Head of Clubs, Counties and Volunteering said: “The LTA is committed to opening up tennis in Britain but we know we can’t achieve this on our own. We are therefore delighted to have formed a much closer, collaborative relationship with TIA UK that will help the whole of tennis in Britain align behind our vision and move together as one in growing the sport for mutual benefit.

Chair of TIA UK Steve Matthews said: “We are very excited about the potential outcomes resulting from our formal relationship with the governing body as it will help create closer engagement and a healthier business environment between tennis clubs (the buyers) and the tennis industry (our members and suppliers) which will also help underpin the LTA’s strategy ‘Tennis Opened Up’".

The news of LTA support for the tennis industry through this agreement, is a much needed uplift as like all business sectors, it has been significantly hit by Covid-19. While tennis is was one of the first sports permitted to restart following the easing of lockdown restrictions, activity will not return to full normality for some time and so many companies believe business will not show signs of recovery until the second quarter 2021 at the earliest.