It’s 03:08 am in Paris and Novak Djokovic did something that he is known for – to come back from a match where he had no chance of winning and turned the tide around in a jiffy. At this point, it’s futile even to try to understand or decode how he does it, but rather enjoy his Serbian ART, which will continue to hurt many opponents.

Most of the tennis fans who watched Djokovic’s encounter against Lorenzo Musetti might argue that the latter was the better player for most of the match and deserved to win. But, it’s not over until it’s over with the Serb as he pulls off one of the most remarkable wins of his career over the young Italian.

If you think that Novak’s heroics would be the dominating story, then you are wrong. As many people should view a contest of such magnitude as possible and this is where tennis, as a sport, continues to fail its fans. Time and again, fans have found it difficult to catch their favorite players playing live and this was what happened to American fans who were waiting to witness this epic.

French Open Streaming Rights: Who are the American stakeholders?

For a long, Tennis Channel has remained the sole source for American tennis fans to follow matches from both the ATP and the WTA tours. Despite tennis being a niche sport, the broadcaster enjoys significant loyalty to this date as fans have gone on to purchase their premium subscriptions as well, in order to get access to more matches.

For decades, French Open rights have been official with NBC. The 2024 edition marks the 42nd year of their association. However, Tennis Channel also holds cable rights for streaming since 2007. While things look great on paper with fans getting assured of proper broadcasting, the ground reality appears skewed.

Take this year for instance. NBC splits the schedule between its streaming service Peacock and Tennis Channel. NBC broadcasted a few matches as part of a weekend special and later moved its streaming to Peacock. With fans getting used to watching it on Tennis Channel, this came off as a surprise.

As part of contractual obligations, Tennis Channel didn’t stream live from Roland Garros. NBC, after its 3-hour slot was done, moved the programming to Peacock, and millions of tennis fans who wanted to watch tennis action were left blind-sided because of this.

If one can take a look at Saturday’s Order of play at the French Open, there were multiple Americans present and they were scheduled to play on show courts (Philippe Chatrier, Suzanne Lenglen, and Simone-Mathieu). Due to incessant rains, the original order took a blow and matches have been moved from one court to the other.

At one point, fans had Taylor Fritz and Emma Navarro. Madison Keys and Tommy Paul played their respective matches and audiences were left stranded without a service (barring Peacock) to catch Americans playing in Paris.

One crucial factor to take note of here is the rain effect in Paris. Right from Day 2, the weather played spoilsport and the matches kept on getting postponed. Even on Saturday, multiple matches on outside courts were either suspended or moved inside show courts, which resulted in further delays for top ATP stars like Novak Djokovic and others to take to the court.

Tennis journalist Matt Zemek took to X (formerly Twitter) to explain the broadcasting debacle that ensued during the Djokovic versus Musetti match.

It’s understandable that slots become an issue as channels will have multiple sports to broadcast and with tennis being a sport where matches can be done in under an hour or can take more than 6 hours, it can get tricky. But, to completely ignore tennis’ most marketable athlete’s match-up at the French Open should induce some discussion.

Not just with the French Open but tennis broadcasting and streaming in America remains a tough nut to crack for corporate bosses. At the center of every sport is a die-hard fan who might sacrifice his/her sleep, or skip a meeting, just to watch their favorite athlete play on the biggest stage to see them win. When that chance gets taken away, the sport will lose its appeal and tennis right now will have to do a lot of introspection in this regard to keep fans invested and interested.