The tennis boom is real. And for once, Westminster is taking notice. The surge in participation post-2020, driven by lockdown paddle battles and the Raducanu effect, has forced a reckoning. The question now: can this momentum be bottled and sold to other sports?
Sources close to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) confirm a quiet fascination with the Lawn Tennis Association's (LTA) grassroots funding strategy. It’s a model built on targeted investment, not just throwing cash at the problem. The LTA has pumped money into park courts, coaching in deprived areas, and rental subsidies. The result? A 45% rise in weekly players since 2019, with the biggest gains among lower-income groups.
‘The LTA has done what Sport England has talked about for years,’ a Whitehall insider told me. ‘They’ve shown that you don’t need a members’ club to play. You need a decent court and a cheap racquet.’
The political angle is sharp. With a general election looming, the Tories want a ‘levelling up’ win that feels real. Tennis isn’t football. It’s not rugby. It’s the sport of middle England, but also of the local park. The LTA model offers a neat narrative: targeted public-private partnerships that boost activity without big state handouts.
But the backbench murmurs are louder than the frontbench applause. Some Tory MPs, particularly those in northern seats where tennis participation still lags, are demanding the model be extended. They want a ‘Tennis Bill’ – or at least a sports strategy that forces other governing bodies to follow suit.
‘Why can’t we do this for badminton? For basketball?’ a northern MP told me, off the record. ‘The LTA has the blueprint. Now we need to photocopy it.’
Labour is watching too. Shadow sports minister Alison McGovern has praised the LTA’s work but warned against ‘one-sport favouritism’. The party is developing its own ‘Active Britain’ plan, likely to propose a dedicated fund for grassroots access, ring-fenced from elite spending.
The real test will be the next spending review. DCMS is under pressure to deliver on the Prime Minister’s promise to make Britain ‘the best place in the world to play sport’. That means cash. And the LTA’s success gives the Treasury an excuse to demand results from other sports.
‘The LTA model works because it’s not just about courts,’ a senior LTA official explained. ‘It’s about coaching, about making it cheap, about getting kids from estates onto Centre Court dreams. Every sport can do that if they stop the vanity projects.’
But there’s a catch. The LTA’s funding came in part from the All England Club, which generates millions from Wimbledon. Other sports don’t have a Wimbledon. The government will need to bridge that gap, or accept that only certain sports can replicate the model.
For now, the mood in the Lobby is cautiously optimistic. Tennis has cracked the code on affordability and access. Westminster wants to borrow it. But as one veteran MP said: ‘In politics, every blueprint gets redlined before it’s approved.’
