PuddingPlease
The old “others have it worse so we don’t need to make it better?”
That’s a disappointing approach.
PuddingPlease There is an assumption running through this discussion that those interviews do not make the competitions more financially profitable but I suspect this wouldn’t be an issue if they didn’t.
The assumption that “they must be there for a good reason” puts a lot of faith in the judgement of the people at the top of the tournaments. I’d suggest that current events show that faith to be misplaced. I would also suspect that any effect the press conferences had on making the tournaments more profitable probably existed in the distant past, when we only had access to celebrities indirectly via the media. That no longer holds.
I would argue that having the top tennis players in the world participate in your tournament does a whole lot more to make them profitable than having people sit around responding to inane questions after it. If insistence on the latter costs you the former - you’ve stuffed up.
I found this article on it really interesting.
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[deleted] I think you might be underestimating the importance of the press conferences. I’d say publicity is arguably one of the most important aspects to any spectacle (sporting or showbiz).
I agree about the importance of publicity. I think you may be overestimating how much of their publicity/public interest is generated by those inane press conferences. There are many more avenues of media now and that’s not one I’ve seen generate any interest.