Coco Gauff’s French Open Heroics Face Shocker as TNT’s $650 Million Bet Sparks Worry

Last year, Warner Bros. Discover and the French Tennis Federation announced that TNT Sports would cover the French Open in the U.S. from 2025. If we go by the numbers, the 10-year agreement included an average of $65 million per year (i.e., a straight jump from $12 million a year that the French Tennis Federation had received from the NBC and the Tennis Channel for the U.S. rights). In its first year of French Open broadcasting, it promised to provide the most comprehensive fan-focused television coverage of this. Talking about bringing a change, Craig Barry, the executive vice president and chief content officer at TNT Sports, said, “I think we’re at a little bit of a crossroads or a renaissance with tennis.” Initially, even the numbers looked quite promising, but now a fresh worry has popped up. 

At the 2025 French Open, TNT Sports left no stone unturned, bringing in tennis legends like Venus Williams, Andre Agassi, John McEnroe, Chris Evert, and a lot more other superstars to take up coverage duty. To complement the star studded roster, fans were even gifted with two nail-biting finals, where at first we saw America’s Coco Gauff stealing a victory from the jaws of defeat against the world number one Aryna Sabalenka. And then, Carlos Alcaraz put up a stellar show in a five-set thriller against Jannik Sinner to clinch his fifth major title.

Reacting to this epic final, tennis legend Jim Courier said, “Their first Grand Slam final is something we will never forget. Celestial tennis from the Spaniard.” Courier’s words were reflected through the stats, and it explained why this five-hour and twenty-nine-minute-long final match was a bit special. This match drew 2.6 million viewers, and it was also the most-watched French Open men’s final since 2021. On the women’s side, the final match across TNT and truTV witnessed a jump of 94% in comparison to the previous year. It was also the most-watched French Open women’s final since 2016.

However, as per the latest report, the recent tennis viewership in the U.S. is so dire that the improvements we’ve seen this year seem to be quite bigger than they actually are. But how? Several reports suggest that although TNT claimed a “94%” increase from 2024, in reality, it was only 1.5 million average viewers for the women’s final in the U.S. (i.e., 0.4% of the U.S. population versus 4.7% of the French pop with 3.2 million viewers.) This stat becomes more astonishing, especially when we consider an American (Coco Gauff) made it to the final this year and won the title from that decider.

Besides this, Warner Bros. Discovery and the French Tennis Federation also extended their agreement to broadcast the French Open in Europe (excluding France) until at least 2030. TNT Sports and their coverage of the 2025 French Open made the headlines quite a few times during these two weeks. But what do the tennis stars have to say on this?

American tennis stars shared their thoughts on TNT Sports’ inaugural French Open coverage in the U.S.

The 2003 US Open champion, Andy Roddick, was the most vocal on this topic. Although he had a few complaints initially surrounding the coverage, saying he would have preferred to watch Rafael Nadal’s iconic farewell, more than watching a tennis match at that time. Then, in another instance, he pointed out another issue during João Fonseca’s match against Hubert Hurkacz. But despite this, Roddick admitted, “TNT’s coverage, I think, for the most part so far has been awesome. It has been a complete upgrade from what we normally see. I think they’ve done a great job.“

Having said that, later on during his podcast, he was yet again spotted celebrating TNT’s huge French Open success by drawing a very interesting example. Not only Roddick, though, even John McEnroe looked quite pleased with their coverage of the 2025 French Open. He said, “Each network does their thing a different way. ESPN’s going to do the way they believe is best for their network, and it’s obviously the same at TNT. TNT seems to embrace more, like, personality in a way: obviously, you look at Charles [Barkley] and the Inside The NBA [team]. And from what I’m seeing, they’re trying to bring some of that to what they’re doing in tennis, so I think that’s great. Personally, I like that.“

Other than that, even Ben Shelton gave a special mention to TNT Sports for doing a “great job” in hyping up the American players. He stated that it was also one of the reasons behind their success at this edition. What are your thoughts on this, though?