Media coverage of Table Tennis

[Grahamfbatts]

I'm very interested to hear from people in different countries about how much mainstream media coverage is given to table tennis.
In England, table tennis used to get TV coverage many years ago but it steadily sank to almost zero during the last decades of the 20th century. Similarly in newspapers, there used to be a fair amount of coverage in the national press but it sank to almost nothing.
Is the same true in other countries? In particular, I am interested in those countries where table tennis is played professionally.
I realise, of course, that live streaming and YouTube have made a huge difference to the volume of table tennis available to us to watch, but my question is really directed at the more traditional media.
Thanks in anticipation of your contributions!

 

[JHB]

Not helpful I know, but I can still remember (just!) when you could occasionally see table tennis on the BBC, no less. Dear old Alan Weeks making helpful comments like "there was a lot of spin on that ball" - those were the days,lol ! I can't ever remember reading much about TT in the press though; local newspapers yes, but the national press never.

 

[Grahamfbatts]

The national press in England certainly covered table tennis in the past, but probably not in the memory of anyone living now. This was the national press line up for a major event in London in 1954.

 

[darucla]

That was possibly the last TT-only major event held in England. Until this February.

 

[Atas Newton]

Eurosport shows WTTC and WC, apart from that I've never seen table tennis on telly in Russia. Well OC also, twice a decade :-( It was slightly better 10-15 years ago, not much though.

 

[whocarez]

Yeah, I have to fall back to Eurosport for table tennis in my country. But, imho they do not cover that much table tennis anymore. Sometimes the Swedish television SVT has some coverage, but it is rare.

 

[JHB]

Eurosport is the main source of televised TT in the UK too although I've never seen it show an event actually taking place in the UK. ITV did an awful highlights reel from the English Championships in 2017 which was mainly waffle and not much actual TT - and was ridiculously sexist too, for example using Emma Vickers as eye candy - and Sky Sports always show the World Championships of Ping Pong, i.e. the hard bat game. BBC cover the Olympic TT reasonably well but that's the only TT they ever show now.

 

[berndtjgmann]

In the American southwest, media coverage of table tennis, be it by newspaper or local television, is virtually nonexistent, unless you wish to stay up until 4:00 in the morning once every four years to watch brief snippets of table tennis during the Olympics.

Media coverage of table tennis has to my knowledge always been rare, though I do recall watching a table tennis match back in 1953 on my parents' 13 inch Motorola television from Chicago, Illinois between a player whose last name was Holzrichter. He was a forehand-oriented all-out attacker, sturdy with curly hair. His opponent (I don't remember his name) was a chopper/backhand pick-hitter. Both wore dark solid color polo shirts with the US Table Tennis Association shield on the left side of their shirts and greyish looking trousers. I later learned that William "Bill" Holzrichter was a member of the USA Table Tennis Hall of Fame.

In the mid-1990s, Harry Sage, a 6-time Ohio State Singles Champion in the late 1940s-early 1950s, showed me some clippings at the Columbus, Ohio club where I used to play of results from various table tennis industrial leagues during that period in the Columbus Dispatch morning newspaper.

As late as 1964 there were still industrial table tennis leagues in Cleveland, Ohio. I was a mercenary on one of them, a B player on a three member team for the firm Ballash Insurance. You did not have to be an employee in order to play; it was perfectly all right if you were a hireling. No newspaper or media coverage, but a handsome shield trophy for our team reading "Bert (sic) Menn (sic), Cleveland Classic Table Tennis League, 1964".

 

[rainneverever]

There was recent news "Ping Pong To Treat Parkinson's?" on CBS but I only learnt it from USATT website. lol
In China, CCTV5 had very good coverage and viewership of TT (ITTF events from ITTF sources, National Games and Asian Championshps from CCTV5 own sources) in 2017, only lower than soccer. Much less coverage on CTTSL though.

 

[Grahamfbatts]

Thanks for all the comments so far. Very interesting to read all of them. Clearly the UK is not alone in having almost no TV coverage of TT. And I'm not surprised to learn that there is plenty in China. How about Germany, France, Belgium or any other countries where you have professional TT leagues? And how about the national press? Is table tennis absent from newspapers around the world. Or perhaps the newspapers themselves have disappeared?

 

[darucla]

OTOH, the very lack of interest by the major broadcasters in the game in the UK means that we get to watch pretty much every ITTF event for free via the internet. Imagine if Sky got hold of the rights.

The BBC cover table tennis in the Olympics quite thoroughly, especially via satellite channels where they have 10 or more channels running all the time, but they do tend to move TT around a lot, when the bigger sports have something they want to show on the more popular channels.

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

South Africa
table tennis has maybe 1 coverage a month at it's best - normally on local TV stations (tier 2 or tier 3 stations) but this is maybe more interview, or local (community) news paper with results of club fixtures or tournament winners etc.

maybe during OG, there would be replays of the finals

The local and national tt federation has close to zero coverage on its own portals

Few years ago I had one of my Xiom sponsored player sent to Paris to play professionally.
I got a press release, and I got her on all main stream news website and 2 national radio stations
Its not too difficult......

 

[JST]

Czech public TV has sports only channel and that broadcasted Czech major league (Extraliga) from time to time since 2007, at some years it was one match per week live or replay, but it looks like no broadcasts since 2016/2017 season (probably Czech TT federation agreed with Laola1.tv and they also have live + archive broadcasts of Extraliga on their internet pages). Czech TV however do live from final days of ITTF World Tour Czech Open every year. Then brief coverage from national/European/World Championships as well as Champions League and other success stories of Czech players (rare in daily sport briefing after main evening news on the main public TV channel. Pretty much all, newspaper basically zero except local titles.

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

Czech public TV has sports only channel and that broadcasted Czech major league (Extraliga) from time to time since 2007, at some years it was one match per week live or replay, but it looks like no broadcasts since 2016/2017 season (probably Czech TT federation agreed with Laola1.tv and they also have live + archive broadcasts of Extraliga on their internet pages). Czech TV however do live from final days of ITTF World Tour Czech Open every year. Then brief coverage from national/European/World Championships as well as Champions League and other success stories of Czech players (rare in daily sport briefing after main evening news on the main public TV channel. Pretty much all, newspaper basically zero except local titles.

This sounds quite bad considering you guys have a world tour there and the TT level is also pretty high
The problem I see for internet broadcast is that the target audience is for TT people
We need target audience for the rest of society - not just for TT people

 

[JST]

This sounds quite bad considering you guys have a world tour there and the TT level is also pretty high.

Well it is bad but considering other countries like UK, Belgium, Sweden - I'm not sure if they even have their major TT league or some ITTF World Tour event live in national-wide TV channel. I also have another problem because I'm obviously biased (since I was 8yo: can TT really be attractive to usual sport fan that they would watch it similar like football/ice-hockey/basketball/rugby/etc.? It seems that despite changes by ITTF in past 20 years (changing counting from best of 3/5 sets till 21 points to best of 5/7 games till 11, bigger balls) which should make it more watchable and attractive it simply doesn't have the magic unless you have some hands-on experience with the game (= how fast it can be and how physically demanding and athletic it is on the highest level).

 

[berndtjgmann]

Well it is bad but considering other countries like UK, Belgium, Sweden - I'm not sure if they even have their major TT league or some ITTF World Tour event live in national-wide TV channel. I also have another problem because I'm obviously biased (since I was 8yo: can TT really be attractive to usual sport fan that they would watch it similar like football/ice-hockey/basketball/rugby/etc.? It seems that despite changes by ITTF in past 20 years (changing counting from best of 3/5 sets till 21 points to best of 5/7 games till 11, bigger balls) which should make it more watchable and attractive it simply doesn't have the magic unless you have some hands-on experience with the game (= how fast it can be and how physically demanding and athletic it is on the highest level).

Yes. Exactly. Americans aren't interested in competitive table tennis because they don't play it, and, if watching it (very rarely), don't understand its subtleties, don't use its equipment when playing among one another recreationally, and don't know and thus have no interest in who its best players are, except some know that they are Chinese (they've never heard of Boll and Ovtcharov) and know that the Chinese put a lot of "English" on the ball.

There are, by some estimates made by sellers of sports equipment, 16 to 20 million Americans who play table tennis recreationally, based presumably on the number of table tennis rackets and table tennis tables sold in a given year. There are probably more Americans who are casual players, who have tables and rackets years old.

USA Table Tennis is not interested in reaching out to these recreational players to persuade them to become members of USATT and thus increase revenue to a sports organization with a yearly budget smaller than a thriving McDonald's franchise. The primary goal, indeed the only stated goal, of USA Table Tennis is to produce future Olympic and international class table tennis players. This without an adequate membership, without media coverage and public relations, and without a sport that presently can compete against already well established American sports such as football, baseball, basketball, and hockey, not to mention soccer, which in the past 30 years American men and particularly women have become quite proficient at.

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

Well it is bad but considering other countries like UK, Belgium, Sweden - I'm not sure if they even have their major TT league or some ITTF World Tour event live in national-wide TV channel. I also have another problem because I'm obviously biased (since I was 8yo: can TT really be attractive to usual sport fan that they would watch it similar like football/ice-hockey/basketball/rugby/etc.? It seems that despite changes by ITTF in past 20 years (changing counting from best of 3/5 sets till 21 points to best of 5/7 games till 11, bigger balls) which should make it more watchable and attractive it simply doesn't have the magic unless you have some hands-on experience with the game (= how fast it can be and how physically demanding and athletic it is on the highest level).

I don't think table tennis is attractive to spectators
Problem starts within, table tennis people generally are not that welcoming to strangers
umpires will just "Fault" noobs serve, rules too strict for non pros in a way
a sport where a 10 year old or 80 year old will beat you 11-0

in a way, it is not that fun for new members to join

watching is worse.
we don't have good commentators on TV
and some how spectators are mostly family or players.
only few countries have fans - and the "celebrity" status is not by the sport, but rather by other forms of marketing or endorsements.

ie Fukuhara Ai is famous since a kid, because she appears on tv very often. She became a celebrity status before even doing good in the world ranking

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

Pass 12 months, I spent collectively about 3 months in Taiwan and with the national players, coaches etc
I witness:
National senior team trials for WTTC
national junior team trials (hundred of kids fighting for 12 x U18 boys and 12 x U18 girls position)
national games trials
national games

All of them (except for junior team trials) had live TV broadcast (the broadcast van parking outside the stadium etc), as well as live social media/tv broadcast
problem I saw was - no spectators (players and coaches don't count)

I guess Taiwanese people only like to watch baseball and basketball live
They would follow TT on TV, but some how TT is just not attractive to watch live

At all of them, print media had reporters there

 

[NextLevel]

Today, even some of the best "TV" shows and movies in the US don't make their money on traditional TV. Streaming allows for more self-selection of content. It's going to be the death of network television over time.

And I agree that some things are better to watch on TV. It is not easy to enjoy table tennis and basketball without a close seat. Sometimes, if I watch in a live stadium I am stuck looking at the Jumbotron. No point driving to watch TV when you can do it at home unless you have a team to cheer for and can get good seats.

 

[berndtjgmann]

Here is the problem in a nutshell. Is competitive table tennis attractive only to those who play or who have played it or can it somehow be made attractive to nonplayers who might want to either watch it on a visual medium (e.g. television) other than YouTube and/or learn how to play at table tennis clubs?

In other words: what is table tennis' purpose and who is the sport for, players only or players and spectators? Is table tennis (globally) simply to be played, or to be both watched and played?