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Tennis Channel nets slew of new auto deals for its French Open coverage

An expanded programming lineup and footprint have helped Tennis Channel (US) add a bevy of new clients across various categories, notably automotive, to its lineup of French Open advertisers.

Tennis Channel will present some 500 live and encore linear hours and an additional 700 via hybrid over-the-top service Tennis Channel Plus through the June 10 conclusion of its 12th year of coverage from the clay-court Grand Slam event in Paris.

The enhanced linear scale helped attract a number of new advertisers, according to Allison Bodenmann, senior vice president of ad sales at Tennis Channel.

Among the newcomers: 3M, BMW, Boehringer, Chanel, Chrysler, Jeep, Discover Financial Services, Dr Pepper, Dunlop, IBM, Hugo Boss, Land Rover, Lowe’s, Milkpep, Nature’s Bounty, Pfizer, Volvo and Alfa Romeo.

"What’s obviously different when you watch our air this year is the major automotive presence during the French Open. BMW, several Chrysler brands, Volvo, Infinity, Lincoln and Land Rover are part of our coverage in Paris," Bodenmann said in an email. "This is a big win for us, and illustrates the value of our audience for high-end automotive brands."

Entering last year’s French Open, Sinclair had only recently closed a deal for Tennis Media assets that brought tennis.com and Tennis magazine to its court.

While most clients have secured TV-only schedules, the expanded portfolio has enticed a number of advertisers to buy multiplatform packages encompassing the linear network, tennischannel.com and tennis.com, the Tennis Channel app and the magazine.

Endemic sponsors with multiplatform positions include Babolat, Dunlop, Tennis Express and Tennis Warehouse. Additionally, AARP, Nature’s Bounty, Longines and Lacoste also bought package deals.

The latter two, official partners of the tournament, have a particularly heavy digital presence, according to Bodenmann.

"Advertisers continue to respond to the quality of our audience, across all categories," she said.

Tennis Channel’s ad sales team is bringing several clients to the tournament, where they can enjoy the clay-court action and the Parisian spring.

Among the differences in the 2018 programming lineup was the first-ever complete coverage of the qualifiers — 196 matches on Tennis Channel Plus — during the week that preceded the May 27 start of the tournament’s main draw. Digital coverage has doubled to 10 courts from five, and select matches are running in a condensed format on the OTT service.

Tennis Channel is televising live coverage of the first 13 days of the 15-day tourney, representing 86% of all live French Open action in the U.S. NBC (US) is the other Stateside rights holders and its coverage culminates with the women’s and men’s championship matches June 9 and June 10.

As Rafael Nadal looks to add an unprecedented 11th French Open title to his mantle, Tennis Channel is covering the event with 51 cameras.

Acquired by Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. in March 2016 for $350 million, the Tennis Channel has benefited from the station’s group retransmission-consent clout and ranked as the fastest-growing cable network in 2017, netting a 29.3% advance to 55.8 million subscribers. Kagan, a media research group within S&P Global Market Intelligence, estimates Tennis Channel will count 58.5 million subscribers in 2018.