This story is part of FanSided’s Fandoms of the Year, a series spotlighting the teams, athletes and cultures that defined sports fandom in 2025.
Morgan Riddle is not a tennis player. She's not Carlos Alcaraz or Coco Gauff. And yet we’re talking about her here. She has become one of the sport’s most visible cultural ambassadors. An influencer and creator, Riddle produces impressively polished vlogs and social content from tennis’s biggest tournaments. What began as a way to document match-day outfits, travel and behind-the-scenes moments while supporting her partner, No. 6-ranked American Taylor Fritz, has evolved into a genuine gateway into the sport for a new generation of fans.
And that’s what we’re seeing across tennis. The sport, at the moment, isn’t defined by a single, mass-recognition superstar, but by the way tennis is finding fans where they already are — in short-form video, through fashion, travel and event culture, on social platforms, in communities.
Tennis is meeting fans where they already are
Riddle’s impact isn’t isolated. She’s part of a broader shift in how tennis is encountered, not through appointment viewing of matches, but in feeds and FYPs. At this year’s Wimbledon tournament, the organization’s social media strategy wasn’t built around highlight distribution. Instead, it let culture be the entry point, leaning into on-site style, atmosphere, access and casual athlete interviews. Fit checks, mic’d-up moments and personality-driven clips often outperformed highlights, with socially fluent hosts, including Riddle, speaking directly to those audiences.
“What was once a strictly sporting event has turned into a global fashion spectacle,” she said in a Wimbledon Threads episode. “I know some of you may not want to hear that, but just because a fact annoys you, doesn’t make it any less true.”
And you know what happened? Wimbledon generated 4.7 billion Instagram impressions, a 61-percent increase year over year. Just 1.5 months later, U.S. Open’s digital platforms saw 3.1 billion total interactions on social media, with 47 million visits, a 19-percent increase from the previous year.
Fashion is becoming one of the sport's most effective gateways
Tennis is increasingly discovered through fashion and aesthetics, and fashion brands across every price point are leaning into it — where there are eyeballs, there’s money, after all.
Yes, there are luxury and heritage brands like Lacoste, Gucci and Miu Miu in the tennis game, but there’s also a huge interest in fashion-forward labels such as Sporty & Rich and Aimé Leon Dore, as well as mass retailers selling tennis-inspired skirts, polos and sweaters.
Sportswear icons like Nike and Lululemon expanded tennis-centric collections in 2025. In August, Lacoste didn’t release a generic merch line around one of their most famous athletes, Novak Djokavic. They literally altered their most sacred brand symbol — the crocodile — into a GOAT. You don’t have to be a Djokovic fan or even a tennis purist to understand the symbolism.
On second-hand fashion marketplace Depop, searches for tennis skirts jumped 53 percent. “Tenniscore” has moved from a niche aesthetic to the mainstream, now showing up as a recurring search term and visual language in Pinterest trend reporting and user behavior.
“I think we obviously have our core of tennis fans, but I think fashion helps bring just casual fans to the sport, a new demographic,” said Coco Gauff in a press conference ahead of this year’s U.S. Open. “We don’t always need the core fans who know every single player. You look at NBA games, there’s so many people who go who don’t really know anything about basketball, other than players. And like for tennis, I think at U.S. Open we get that demographic of people, but I think more on a tour level, I would love to see that.”
This era of tennis
The Serena Williams era was defined by mass recognition. Fans arrived through competition, through her dominance on the court. Today, fans often arrive around the sport. There are more entry points, more reasons to stay and more communities forming.
Yes, there’s Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, Aryna Sabalenka, Naomi Osaka and Coco Gauff. But tennis isn’t waiting on one transcendent star to carry coverage. It’s expanding its audience because it no longer has to.
On top of that, younger fans aren't experiencing fandom like they used to. Research from Morning Consult shows that Gen Z fans are less likely to describe themselves as diehards and more likely to engage with sports through personalities, moments and cultural relevance. It’s less about allegiance and more about identity, participation and belonging. And because of tournament activations, community-driven experiences and social-first storytelling, people don’t need to fully understand tennis to feel like they belong around it. The fandom feels personal even when it’s massive.
A blueprint for the future of fandom
Across the Grand Slams, tennis continues to draw crowds. The Australian Open set a record with more than 1.2 million attendees in 2025; the French Open set a new attendance high with roughly 685,000 fans, and U.S. Open ticket sales were up 70 percent over five years.
The U.S. Open captures the push and pull of tennis’s renaissance. Growth has brought bigger crowds and far more corporate tie-ins (again, where there are eyeballs, there’s money) but also higher barriers to event tickets. According to Bloomberg and SeatGeek, average ticket prices climbed to about $450 this year.
As tennis looks ahead, its opportunity isn’t choosing between old fans and new ones, it’s continuing to build a fandom big enough to hold both.