In 2001, Tennis Channel was founded by
Steve Bellamy in the shed in his backyard; Bellamy soon hired Bruce Rider to head up programming and marketing. A group known as the "Viacom Mafia"—a group that includes Viacom's former CEOs,
Philippe Dauman and
Frank Biondi, and current CEO,
Thomas E. Dooley—became involved in the founding of the channel. This group invested and rounded up additional investors,
Bain Capital Ventures,
J.P. Morgan Partners,
Battery Ventures, Columbia Capital,
Pete Sampras and
Andre Agassi, who as a group invested about $100 million. These founders felt with other single sports channel like the
Golf Channel succeeding with a mostly male demographic and tennis having viewer of both sexes and of a desirable high-end demographic that a tennis channel would draw in advertisers. The channel officially launched on May 15, 2003, after its first live event, a
Fed Cup tie in Lowell, Massachusetts, was broadcast in April as part of a "sneak preview". Tennis Channel announced plans to hold women's and junior events alongside it. In 2005, after struggling viewership (having only reached a subscriber base of 5 million by 2006), attributed to a lack of coverage of high-profile tournaments (such as the
Grand Slam), the channel's David Meister was replaced by Ken Solomon. Outbidding
ESPN by more than double, Tennis Channel acquired the cable rights to the
French Open in 2006. The network then sub-licensed approximately half of the package to ESPN, at a higher price than ESPN had offered to the French Tennis Federation for the entire package. In 2008, Tennis Channel sold the Tennis Channel Open event back to the ATP, citing growth of its core businesses tied to its rapid acquisitions of Grand Slam tournament rights; beginning 2009, Tennis Channel also split cable rights to the
US Open with ESPN. In April 2013,
Al Jazeera Media Network was speculated as expressing interest in purchasing the channel to complement
beIN Sports, though nothing came of this. The channel opened an online store selling professional and lifestyle golfing merchandise and gear on August 14, 2013. The store is operated by Delivery Agent under the Shop TV brand. In 2013, Tennis Channel launched its
TV Everywhere service Tennis Channel Everywhere. On May 25, 2014, the network also launched Tennis Channel Plus, a new direct-to-consumer subscription service including coverage of additional events not seen on television, also including digital rights to the French Open outside of the finals. Tennis Channel carriers receive a cut of profits from the service. In 2015, Tennis Channel acquired rights to the
Citi Open, an
ATP World Tour 500 and
WTA International tournament in Washington, D.C., under a four-year contract. The event was formerly part of the
US Open Series, but withdrew due to frustration over
ESPN (rightsholder of the series due to its new contract to be exclusive broadcaster of the US Open proper) only promising a limited amount of television coverage.
Sinclair era On January 27, 2016,
Sinclair Broadcast Group, the largest owner of over-the-air television stations in the United States, announced that it would acquire Tennis Channel for $350 million. In the statement announcing the purchase Sinclair CEO David Smith said that Tennis Channel had high-quality content and advertisers, though it had been valued low and was under-distributed. Sinclair also gets greater than $200 million of net operating losses to offset its future taxes. Days later, Tennis Channel announced an extension to its contract for the French Open. In addition, citing its preference to hold rights to the entire tournament, ESPN dropped its sub-licensing agreement with Tennis Channel for the French Open, giving it exclusive cable rights to the tournament (with
NBC continuing to be the broadcast television rightsholder). In March 2017, Sinclair additionally acquired
Tennis magazine and Tennis.com, seeking to integrate Tennis Channel with them to boost its cross-platform presence. In October 2018, it was announced that Tennis Channel had acquired rights to the 46 overseas events of the
WTA Tour under a five-year deal beginning in 2019, replacing
beIN Sports. beIN had acquired the WTA Tour rights as part of a larger deal covering 30 countries, but the deal faced criticism from U.S. viewers due to the network's narrow carriage (only serving half as many households as Tennis Channel, with several top providers having also dropped the channel that August), as well as frequent scheduling conflicts favoring soccer coverage. In 2019, Tennis Channel reached a five-year extension of its rights to the Citi Open. The tournament also re-joined the US Open Series under new ownership. In October 2020, Tennis Channel renewed its rights to the ATP Tour, and also added rights to
Masters 1000 events held in North America beginning in 2021 (previously aired by ESPN under a separate contract). This made Tennis Channel the exclusive U.S. broadcaster of all Masters 1000 events. == On-air personalities ==