THE DAILY Goes One-On-One With Steve Bellamy

The Tennis Channel Founder And President Steve Bellamy

Independent Business magazine called The Tennis Channel Founder & President STEVE BELLAMY a combination of P.T. BARNUM, DON KING, BILL GATES and BILLY GRAHAM. And indeed Bellamy has been a showman, promoter, innovator and evangelist -- in addition to being a player, coach, marketer and overall cheerleader -- for the game for which he has had a lifelong passion.  He is also a musician, a guitar collector, a strict vegetarian and a self-confessed homebody.  In ’85, Bellamy founded Atonal Tennis Inc., which built and operated numerous tennis-related facilities and businesses.  In May of ’03, he and DAVID MEISTER launched The Tennis Channel, a 24-hour cable television network that has quickly become the center for all things related to the sport.  Bellamy spoke recently with SportsBusiness Journal New York bureau chief Jerry Kavanagh.

Q: You stated that your goals for The Tennis Channel were to be in 8-10 million homes by the end of ‘04 and to include more diverse programming.  Have you realized those goals?

Bellamy: Lots of our distribution is on sports tiers and we don’t get the reports until long after the fact.  In the big-picture distribution we’ve done great.  We’ll be announcing a bunch of new distribution deals shortly.  In terms of quantity of subscribers, it’s just an impossible thing to answer now.  We don’t know exactly how many homes are getting The Tennis Channel.  I’m going to guess we’re either at the goal or just shy of it.

Q: What about your demographics?  What kind of information do you have?

Bellamy: It’s all anecdotal at this point.  But we are finding that we are hitting the hard-core tennis player a lot harder than we would have anticipated.  They are just literally using The Tennis Channel like a fish tank.  If you are a tennis fan, the chances of your television only being tuned to The Tennis Channel and nothing else is very high.  I talk to people all day long that, literally, they wake up in the morning and turn [the TV] on and they turn it off at midnight when they go to bed and the whole day is literally tuned to The Tennis Channel.

Q: I wonder if that’s the case with any other channel?

Bellamy: I would think early MTV was relatively similar.  When I was a kid I had that thing on all day long.  We can’t believe the skew of people.  You know, I’ll take my nine-year-old to a tennis tournament and I’ll have nine-year-olds who come up to me and say, “You’re The Tennis Channel guy.  Wow!  I watch it all day long.”  We would never anticipate that we’d have nine-year-olds watching.  I don’t know if we’re going to get many breakfast company advertisers.

Q: How were you able to get investors to believe in The Tennis Channel?

Bellamy: We had to go out and raise money at literally the single hardest time in the history of the world -- harder than the Depression when we were out raising money.  I don’t know if you know all the gloominess of that 2002-2003 time period, but literally the investment world just shut down.  It came to a screeching halt.  So, I literally became a banker.  For a year, all I did was just sell, sell, sell the sport of tennis.  I never took “No” for an answer. I never let a door shut.  I was the most persistent salesman for the sport of tennis -- I would say for any sport there is -- and the persistence paid off.

Q: You have deals with, among others, Time Warner Cable, Adelphia and Cox Communications.  Where are you with Comcast and DirecTV?

Bellamy: We will be making announcements very shortly.

Q: With so many options available now for viewers, how do you compete for attention?

Bellamy: We are forced to go deep.  And as the television landscape fragments, it’s going to accrue to our benefit.  And it’s going to really cripple the broadcasters; the people that have big, fat viewing schedules.  The niche-ier networks are going to be the ones that do well and the broad ones are going to be the ones that do bad.  So we’re very lucky.  You couldn’t be a more targeted niche than The Tennis Channel.  And the name, The Tennis Channel, obviously makes it extremely easy for viewers to understand, as compared to, like, Trio, Bravo, Oxygen -- some of these names that are easily going to go out and spend a lot of money to market those brands to make the consumer understand what they are.  We’ve got programming that is right down the wheelhouse of a very targeted niche that has a very hungry appetite for the programming we have.  We’re going to really focus on serving those people.

Bellamy Expects To Announce Venture Into A Professional Sporting Event

Q: What are your expectations for The Tennis Channel in ‘05?

Bellamy: We’ve got all kinds of things.  We’ll be announcing a very big acquisition somewhere in the next couple of months of a professional sporting event.  We’re going deep into tennis.  We’re trying to find all kinds of ways to verticalize the business.

Q: What’s the biggest challenge facing tennis today?

Bellamy: It’s extraordinarily harder to get breakout stars because the competitive field is so deep, especially on the men’s side.  There are so many great men, it’s very hard to get a consistent winner week after week because if you win one week, that means you had to play six or seven very hard matches.  You’re dead tired now for the next week. So very typically, the person who wins the first week in February loses in the first round the second week in February.  Before, it was very easy when you always had MCENROE, CONNORS, BORG get to the finals of every single tournament.  So that’s our biggest challenge, and plus just the overall clutter of the sports landscape in America.

Q: You mentioned McEnroe, Connors and Borg.  What is the difference between them and today’s stars?

Bellamy: The talent in tennis today, I would argue, is higher than any professional sport.  Tennis is being played at a level that is just mind-numbing.  Take professional basketball: It’s really only played with a universe of one country.  And in that country, you basically have to be 6’5” or over to compete.  The universe of people that are over 6’5” and live in the country is very small.

In tennis, it’s completely international.  You’ve got to beat the entire world when you succeed in tennis.  And it’s year-round.  There is no off-season.  So, the bar is constantly being pushed up and up and up.  It is a grind, but the product is stunning.  If you go watch a professional tennis match today your jaw is on the ground.  I still play with these players all the time and I know how good they are.  I’ve watched it from the other side of the net, watching the ball come over, the last 20 years.  Every year it gets better and better.

Unequivocally, the players at the top of the game today are much superior to the players of yesteryear.  Those players were great and they certainly laid the groundwork, but these players today have refined it to an unbelievable level.

Q: You referred to tennis as an international game. DONALD DELL said that one thing nobody really focuses on is that tennis is a global sport -- unlike baseball, football and hockey.

Bellamy: Right.  Take football.  The majority of players are American and they have to weigh over 250 pounds to compete in it.  Plus, I would argue that a lot of sports are more or less exhibitions.  You’re paid a salary to play basketball, and it really doesn’t matter that much whether you win or you lose.  A lot of people -- I won’t say myself -- argue that until the NBA hits the playoffs it’s really ... I’m not saying they’re phoning it in, but it’s just not like tennis where you’re fighting for lunch week in and week out.

Q: Does tennis need a commissioner?

Bellamy: Tennis would absolutely be served by a commissioner.

Q: If you were tennis commissioner, what would be your first move?

Bellamy: I’d develop one set of strategies and give everyone clear tactics and assignments.  Tennis is the best professionally played sport there is today.  Tennis is the best sport to provide fitness for life.  It is as mentally and physically stimulating and challenging as anything. There are no boundaries of gender, age, race, affluence and skill.  It is spectacularly wonderful and we have deprived ourselves of positioning it as such and exploiting it as such because of all the different missions and self interest.

Q: Tennis is the best sport to provide fitness for life?  Surely there are other sports than can make that claim.

Bellamy: No.  Not really.  Well, you could.  Basketball, baseball and football are not lifetime sports. Ninety-nine percent of the player body quits at age 15 or 16.  Tennis, golf, skiing -- these are sports that people pretty much do their whole lives.  But golf is not nearly as accessible.  You can’t do it in cold weather.  You can’t do it at night.  Skiing is very inaccessible. Tennis is the only one that you can play indoors, outdoors, day or night, any town in any city in America, any country in the world. So, in terms of being fit for life, it is something that, if you know how to play tennis, you’re going to be healthier at 60 for it.

Q: Does that tie in with your statement, “I want to grow tennis because I think it will be a great thing for our society.”  A great thing because of the fitness benefit?

Bellamy: It’s because of a lot of things.  My business acumen was born from a tennis court.  And my social concern was born on a tennis court.  I got to watch 10,000 tennis students and how their lives got enhanced by playing tennis. If you’re a kid and you lack confidence and you go out and find a way to win a tennis match, I’d argue that there are times that what you learned in that lesson was more valuable than a year of school.  It’s just amazing what it can do when you have a “mano-a-mano” type of sport and you’re under constant pressure and you have to change your game plan time and time again to win.

Q: You told RICHARD VATCH of Tennis-X, “I want to grow the sport and I will do everything in my power to pummel those in my way.”  Who or what has been an obstacle?

Bellamy: Money.  It was hard to raise money, and I’m not going to not raise the money.  I’m going to knock on every door, and I’m going to knock on it 3 or 4 or 5 or 20 times if I have to. Ninety-nine percent of the world would have quit, you know, when they were trying to raise the Tennis Channel money.  It just was impossible.  “No” is not an acceptable answer.
With getting carriage on the distributors, we’re keeping great relationships, but if someone says no, we go back and give 20 reasons why they should say yes.  And if they still say no, we find 20 more reasons, and we continue to do that.

Q: Is that how you “grow” the sport?

Bellamy: Well, tennis has suffered greatly because of television.  Tennis is not a sport that lends itself to the typical broadcast schedule.  Typically, a broadcast will have a two-hour slot for a game or whatever, and that’s how they program their network.  A tennis match can go 15 minutes, or it can go 7 hours and 45 minutes.  So, it’s not a television-friendly sport in that manner, and we really needed a tennis channel so that we could fit it in.

Q: I read where the USTA earned a record profit of $27M in ‘03. Is that an indication of the health of tennis today?

Bellamy Sees Roddick's Pop-Culture Crossover As Sign Of Strength

Bellamy: Tennis is extraordinarily healthy in a lot of ways.  The grand slams have just been ridiculously successful.  Nearly 700,000 people go to the U.S. Open annually.  It’s the largest annual sporting event in the world.  When I was at Wimbledon this year, people were camped out for tickets for ten days even though after one day they knew they weren’t going to get tickets.  It is doing so well on so many levels.  The stars are as big as they’ve ever been.  They’re popping into pop culture.  RODDICK is in Us magazine every time you pick it up.  So is SERENA WILLIAMS.  So is ANNA KOURNIKOVA.  The sport is just crushing it.  Baby boomers are putting their kids back into tennis in record numbers.  I own a tennis club and we just cannot find enough court space to put all the kids on the court.

Q: Any negatives?

Bellamy: We need to do better on equipment sales.  We used to have a thriving pro shop infrastructure.  Over the years, attrition has set in and we have not replenished those pro shops.  We need to do that.  We need better sponsorship dollars.  Things like NASCAR and NFL have gobbled up so much sponsorship money that’s its been tougher for sports like tennis.

Q: What is your opinion on how the USTA is run?

Bellamy: I think the USTA is one of the best gifts to tennis because it is such an enormous cash cow.  I challenge them to do a better job of helping to grow the game, basically.

Q: KURT KAMPERMAN of the USTA called you the shrewdest or most creative businessman in tennis today.  Who would you cite?

Bellamy: Probably me.  I’m not saying that gloating. Because of the way the sport is, most of the people have been in for 30 or 40 years that are running it.  But we don’t get a lot of new blood in there.  In the tennis world, I’m by far one of the younger guys.  So I’m bringing this new enthusiasm.  I’ve got this new big media vehicle that is so powerful.  By the end of ‘05 we will have more subscribers than all of the tennis magazines in the world combined.  For business, this is by far the biggest 800-pound gorilla.

Q: Who is the most influential person in your career?

Bellamy: I’ve been sheltered.  It’s not like I’ve spent lots of time with the JACK WELCHES or those kinds of people. I grab a little bit of what is good from a lot of different people.

Q: What’s a typical day off like?

Bellamy: I probably work a minimum of 12 hours and a maximum of 20 hours.  On a day off, ... I have 4 boys.  I love playing tennis with my kids, wrestling with my kids.  I like being in my house.  I have a recording studio in my house.  I used to own 550 guitars.  I have some very rare ones, really interesting ones, hand-made ones, very special.

Q: What is your favorite piece of music?

Bellamy: I’ve written 1,500 songs.  I have five albums. I’ve toured the country.  I have records playing on commercial radio all over the country.  I had a video for MTV.  I still, to this day, own recording studios and rehearsal studios.  A lot of the music on The Tennis Channel is my music with the vocals taken out.  Do I have a favorite song?  Yes.  “Born to Run.”

Q: Which athlete you most enjoy watching?

Bellamy: PARADORN SRICHAPHAN.

Q: What is your favorite sporting event?

Bellamy: The U.S. Open.

Q: Who is the best tennis player you’ve ever seen?

Bellamy: ROGER FEDERER.

Q: Who is the greatest competitor?

Bellamy: Either Andy Roddick or LLEYTON HEWITT.

Q: What is your favorite movie

Bellamy: “The Princess Bride” is certainly up there, as is “Pulp Fiction.”

Q: Who is your favorite actor?

Bellamy: MARTIN SHORT, solely because of the line when he [played] a slimy Hollywood agent: “I’ve never seen your work, but I think you’re fabulous.”  I can’t remember the movie. (Editor’s note: The movie was “The Big Picture.”)

Q: Who is your favorite actress?

Bellamy: HILARY SWANK.

Q: What was the last book you read?

Bellamy: “Rich Dad, Poor Dad.”

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