Infront, the worldwide sports activities media and advertising company, has been chosen because the profitable bidder for the ITF’s international knowledge and betting streaming rights for the interval 2025-2029, following an intensive RFP course of that started in early 2023 and noticed a variety of bidders submit detailed proposals.
The deal, starting in 2025, encompasses a variety of ITF produced occasions marking a major step within the growth of Infront’s knowledge enterprise.
The brand new five-year settlement will assist to ship an enhanced fan expertise by way of wealthy knowledge and metrics, create new business alternatives and develop compelling knowledge tales round ITF occasions. Improvements will embody a brand new umpire scoring resolution, with Infront supplying greater than 650 handheld units to be transported world wide as per the necessities of the ITF competitors calendar.
The partnership will produce a major monetary uplift for the ITF, permitting for elevated funding for international tennis growth and continued funding within the aggressive pathway, which has seen report prize cash for ladies in two consecutive years throughout the ITF World Tennis Tour.
Infront, headquartered in Switzerland and with 40 places of work world wide, will work intently with the ITF to satisfy the particular wants of ITF competitions and handle the long-term ambitions of the ITF and tennis internationally, supporting world-class requirements of integrity within the course of.
Because the world governing physique for tennis, the ITF’s function is to make sure the long-term progress and sustainability of the game, globally. It organises circa 1,850 males’s, girls’s and junior tournaments on the ITF World Tennis Tour on an annual foundation and manages the ITF Junior Group competitions, ITF Seaside Tennis World Tour, UNIQLO Wheelchair Tennis Tour and the ITF World Tennis Masters Tour, along with the lads’s and ladies’s World Cup of Tennis, Davis Cup and Billie Jean King Cup by Gainbridge, and the Olympic and Paralympic tennis competitions.
Throughout the time period, streaming rights will likely be added to Davis Cup and Billie Jean King Cup by Gainbridge competitions from 2026.
The events will now work collectively to agree and finalise contractual phrases in preparation for the brand new rights cycle. Kelly Fairweather, ITF CEO, stated:
“Bringing matches alive by way of stay scoring and streaming is on the coronary heart of the fan, participant, media and market engagement in our competitions, in addition to being pivotal to rising our sport and important to integrity. We’re delighted to nominate Infront as our Official Information Associate from 2025-2029.
“Tennis followers are on the centre of what we do on the ITF and the brand new partnership with Infront will allow us to supply a greater end-to-end expertise for all followers. We will even see innovation out on the court docket and a major monetary uplift from these rights that we are going to use to assist the participant pathway and the event of tennis globally.
“I wish to take this chance to thank all bidders who took half on this aggressive tender course of. I might additionally prefer to thank our present companion, Sportradar, for all the things they’ve delivered for us over greater than a decade and we look ahead to persevering with to work with them within the remaining interval of our partnership to the tip of 2024.”
Chris Catling, Senior Director, Infront, stated: “This partnership is monumental for Infront. We’ve been diligently engaged on increasing our operations on this space of our enterprise, particularly what we will provide our vary of shoppers relating to knowledge. The Infront expertise arm, The Lab, will likely be key to driving expertise innovation. This settlement with the ITF, an Olympic federation, is a testomony to our efforts and we look ahead to implementing our progressive options with the ITF and collaborating with them to raise the expansion of tennis.”
The brand new contract with Infront is one other business final result of ‘ITF2024’, the ITF’s long-term plan for sustainable progress. Since its introduction the technique has helped drive a major upturn within the ITF’s monetary efficiency and enabled report ranges of funding for the worldwide sport. The ITF’s reinvestment in tennis has grown by 95.4% or $41.5 million since 2015 to $85.0 million final yr.
