Tennis in India: How the Country Became a Fast-Growing Audience

Former Wimbledon champion Leander Paes said it’s exciting to see the league growing in India, that Hindi commentary will attract more people, and that with several young players taking up the sport, he sees it as just the beginning. Indian tennis player Ankita Line: remembered looking forward to the start of Wimbledon as a child. All England Club commercial and marketing director Osama Al-Kassab says interest in tennis has grown tremendously in recent years, which has been shown by viewing figures in India, ballot entries and the club’s social media numbers.

According to BARC, Star Sports’ coverage of Wimbledon 2024 has become the most watched Grand Slam ever in India. Hindi coverage significantly increased growth in Hindi-speaking regions such as Delhi, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

It men’s singles final between Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic got India’s best ever rating for a men’s grand slam final, and women’s final between Barbora Krejcikova and Jasmine Paolini became India’s highest-ranked women’s grand slam final. Highlights and shows in Hindi, Tamil and Kannada garnered an additional 14 million first-time viewers.

The 2025 edition, which now owns JioStar, has seen a 77 percent growth in its JioHotstar streaming service, while the newly acquired US Open: set a benchmark of 388 million minutes of viewing on linear television, the highest ever for that tournament in India. JioStar has exclusive Indian rights to the US Open until 2030.

Indian Grand Slam audience by numbers (host and Wimbledon numbers)

Tennis in India. which is still holding it back

For 21 years this century, India was one of the places where the tennis season opened. The ATP 250 event, which he held in Pune and before that in Chennai and New Delhi, was the biggest event in the country and brought; Rafael NadalStan Wawrinka, Carlos Moya and Daniil Medvedev – Indian tennis courts. In 2024, it was finally moved to Hong Kong. Tennis lovers still remember Vijay Amritraj’s flair, Bhupathi’s booming serve and Paes at the net.

Since the Ramanathan Krishnan era in the 1950s, Indian tennis players have largely had to finance their careers by living off prize money, with little or no support from the federation. Former India No. 1 Somdev Devvarman said lack of support is one of the many reasons for the trust deficit between the players and the All India Tennis Association (AITA). At the start of 2024, India had seven men’s doubles players in the top 100 in the rankings, but no singles player, with the Davis Cup team relegated to World Group II level for the first time in 2023, with no one clearly on the way yet. Sania Mirza smooth out the women’s game.

Bopanna and Nagal

43 years, 10 months and 23 days, Rohan Bopanna won 2024 Australian Open men’s doubles with Australia’s Matthew Ebden at Rod Laver Arena, the oldest man to win a grand slam title, shortly after becoming the oldest player to be ranked world No. 1 in doubles. He is the fourth Indian to hold a grand slam title after Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi and Sania Mirza. After a match point, the pair collided chests, a celebration involving Paes and Bhupathi, before sinking to the ground. His first major came in 2017, the French Open mixed doubles title with Canada’s Gabriela Dabrowski, so he now has a grand slam in both men’s and mixed doubles.

Sumit Nagal He always wanted to play cricket as a child, he tells The Bridge, but his father wasn’t a big fan of team sports and one of his father’s friends suggested tennis. Nagal picked up a racket at the age of seven and a half and, he says, never looked back. A breakthrough moment came when he was selected for the Mahesh Bhupathi Tennis Academy under the Apollo Tires Mission 2008 programme. He credits the Premier Tennis League with introducing tennis to a wider audience. His milestones so far:

• 2015: Wimbledon boys’ doubles title with Lee Hoang Nam of Vietnam
• 2020: First Indian since 2013 to win a singles main draw at a grand slam
• 2021: First Indian in 25 years to reach second round of Olympic singles in Tokyo

Davis Cup in Bengaluru

By then the team had climbed back up. In September 2025, India beat Switzerland 3–1 in World Group 1 in Biel, their first win over a European country in Europe since 1993, when Paes and Ramesh Krishnan teamed up against France and Nagal defeated Henri Bernet 6–1, 6–3 in reverse singles. In February 2026, hosts India found themselves in a tough fight against the higher-ranked Netherlands at the SM Krishna Tennis Stadium in Bengaluru in a Davis Cup qualifier, with the Dutch ranked sixth in the world and India ranked 33rd. Home advantage exists in any sport, Nagal said before the tie, recalling that he had five fans in front of 7,000 French fans at the Olympics. It helped Dakshineswar SureshWith a 6-4, 7-6 victory over Guy Den Ooden in the deciding fifth rubber match, in which he served 15 aces, India won the tie 3-2 and advanced to the second qualifying round in September. There in Seoul, they Lost 3-1 to South Koreawho made it to the final 8 in Bologna, so India will start the first leg of the 2027 qualifiers again.

Back in February, about ten days after the Netherlands match, at the ITF Women’s Open W100 in Bengaluru, Andrew Moss of the International Tennis Federation said that India is a huge country with a huge tennis history and huge potential. He called the ITF World Tennis Tour, which has about 1,200 tennis tournaments a year in 75 countries, the main pathway for players to progress from youth and entry-level tournaments to the professional circuit, and said the stadium facilities were fantastic. He also met officials of the Karnataka State Lawn Tennis Association to discuss bringing more ITF World Tennis Tour events to Bengaluru, creating additional opportunities for Indian athletes. Pointing to the Davis Cup match, he said that in team competitions, players are representing their countries and doing extraordinary things, and that the way things are going in Bengaluru is starting to be a real catalyst for interest in the game there.