This past Tuesday night Serena Williams played Venus Williams in a quarterfinal battle in the U.S. Open. Serena won the intriguing match two sets to one and in doing so kept her quest to win the Grand Slam alive. She is attempting to become the first female in over 25 years to win the big four tennis tournaments of the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and U.S. Open.

According to data from Nielsen, Birmingham, AL was one of eleven markets to set a new high for tennis on the ESPN network. Overall the match generated a 4.8 Nielsen rating. According to Cynopsis Media, "The entire telecast (which includes a second match pitting Djokovic/Lopez) delivered a 2.7 from Nielsen’s metered markets, marking the second best numbers for tennis in ESPN history on any platform. Metered markets saw West Palm Beach lead the way with a 4.8 for the telecast, followed by New York (4.7), Atlanta (4.5), Richmond (4.1) and Washington DC (4.0)." In addition to Birmingham, ten other individual markets set a new high for tennis on ESPN. Most of these were in the South and included New Orleans, Raleigh-Durham, Miami, Louisville, Philadelphia, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Sacramento and Nashville.

You might also be interested in reading this Serena Williams article by @Mashable that I contributed to that examined why Serena's success isn't translating into sponsorship deals.

Written by: Darin W. White, Ph.D.

Source: Cynopsis Media