BT Sport has signed a deal with the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) to
show as much as 800 hours per year of live tennis featuring the best
women players in the world, including the season-ending showpiece TEB
BNP Paribas WTA Championships. BT Sport will show live matches from 21 WTA tournaments across the globe.
The announcement coincides with an upturn in fortunes for British women’s tennis, with two British players, Laura Robson and Heather Watson, both ranked in the WTA Top-50 for the first time since July 1987. Watson became the first British woman since 1988 to win a WTA title when she triumphed in the HP Japan Women’s Open in Osaka last October. The following month, Robson, who won Olympic silver at the London 2012 mixed doubles alongside Andy Murray, was voted the WTA Newcomer of the Year for 2012.
The BT Sport deal is for four years and includes the five elite WTA tournaments – Indian Wells, Miami, Madrid, Beijing and Istanbul. During the 2013 season, the rights will be held jointly with previous holder Eurosport, but from 2014 will be exclusively owned by BT Sport.
