WASHINGTON — Hunt Valley, Maryland-based Sinclair Broadcast Group is doubling down on the tennis audience, agreeing to acquire Tennis Media, owner of Tennis Magazine and Tennis.com, for as much as $14 million.
It comes a year after Sinclair paid $350 million to acquire cable’s The Tennis Channel.
Sinclair, which owns WJLA Channel 7 in the D.C. market as well as more than 170 other television stations across the country, sees tennis fans as a lucrative attraction for advertisers. It says the median household income for Tennis Magazine’s readership is just above $150,000 a year.
During the just-completed Australian Open, Tennis Channel was No. 1 with viewers with household incomes of $100,000 or more.
“Advertisers have never had the one-stop-shopping opportunity to sponsor the top print, television and online tennis destinations in the same place, in one transaction,” said Ken Solomon, president of The Tennis Channel.
Tennis.com has 25 million monthly page views and 2 million unique monthly visitors. Tennis Magazine has a circulation of 600,000.
Sinclair says The Tennis Channel reaches close to 50 million households, citing data from comScore Inc.
