Coco Gauff is dominating the competition at the Italian Open right now, and it’s highlighting a huge missed opportunity for tennis video games. Every exciting match, comeback, and energetic night session feels like something players should be experiencing in a game, not just seeing on social media. It’s strange that the genre isn’t taking advantage of this moment. Gauff is essentially providing publishers with a perfect star player, a built-in audience, and compelling real-life stories that could easily be turned into a game’s story mode, but there’s no sense of urgency to capitalize on it. Tennis finally has a recognizable star that attracts casual viewers, yet the games themselves are lagging behind.
Tennis has been steadily gaining popularity, and Coco Gauff has been a key part of that rise from the beginning. She first gained attention at Wimbledon in 2019 when, at just 15 years old, she defeated Venus Williams, a five-time champion, in a match that felt like the start of a new era. Since then, she’s gone from being a promising young player to a consistent challenge for her competitors. She won her first Grand Slam singles title at the 2023 US Open and followed that up with a victory at the 2025 French Open against Aryna Sabalenka, becoming the first American woman to win the French Open since Serena Williams in 2015. Beyond the court, Gauff is equally impressive. In 2025, she was named the highest-paid female athlete by Forbes, earning over $30 million, largely through endorsements with brands like New Balance, Mercedes-Benz, and Rolex. Experts consistently identify her as the most marketable player in tennis.
Tennis Video Games Are Stuck In The Past
As a tennis fan, it feels really strange how few options we have when it comes to tennis games. For years, the Top Spin series was the only one I really cared about, but it just disappeared after Top Spin 4 came out in 2011! It was frustrating because every year we’d get a new FIFA or NBA 2K, but tennis fans were left with nothing. When TopSpin 2K25 finally arrived in 2024, the initial reaction and reviews were all pretty much the same: the gameplay itself feels good, and it is a tennis game at its heart, but it feels… incomplete. The biggest problem is the roster – so many of the top players are missing! You can find tons of discussions online – on sites like Reddit – where fans are wondering why a series that was gone for so long came back with such a limited selection of players. It just feels like it launched before it was really finished.
Okay, so here’s the deal with why getting realistic players in a tennis game is so tough. Unlike football or basketball – where one organization handles licensing for all the players in games like Madden and NBA 2K – tennis is different. Every player is basically their own boss, owning their own image and likeness. That means the game developers have to cut individual deals with every single pro just to get their names and faces in the game. We TopSpin 2K fans already know how expensive and complicated that can be, especially when a series is trying to make a comeback. But then you look at how much money sports games are making – EA Sports FC (soccer) is huge, then football and basketball. Tennis? It barely shows up on the radar. So when developers say licensing is difficult, it makes you wonder if that’s the real reason, or just an excuse for not wanting to put in the effort. It feels like they’re hiding behind the difficulty instead of actually trying to make it happen.
Coco Gauff’s recent matches at the Italian Open have been incredibly dramatic and feel like something out of a video game storyline. She overcame early setbacks in several matches, including dropping the first set of her opener and saving a match point against a young opponent. She then defeated tough competitors, including the player who had just upset the world’s number one ranked player, to reach the final for the second year in a row. This impressive run also earned her a new record for the most clay-court wins at the WTA 1000 level for a player her age. The story of her tournament has been so compelling and seamless that it would feel perfectly natural as a career mode progression in a sports game – it’s already that captivating.
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It’s clear the lack of interest isn’t coming from players – that’s what’s so frustrating. The sports gaming market is consistently growing, with football, basketball, and soccer remaining popular, while tennis is often considered a smaller market. However, mobile tennis games tell a different story. The creators of Tennis Clash report over 170 million players globally, and Winners Alliance recently announced they’re adding official pro players – a long-overdue feature. Essentially, people will play and enjoy tennis games if they’re well-made. The issue isn’t a lack of demand; it’s that no one has yet created a truly outstanding tennis game.
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2026-05-15 18:07