'Big Brother' is watching ... tennis: Many eyes, in many ways, are on the sport in 2025

Australian tennis officials are over the moon about the success of their recent Grand Slam, which became something like “The Happy Slam” on steroids. Attendance records were shattered. Video feeds carpeted every area of the facility, including the bowels of Rod Laver Arena, giving global fans unprecedented, peeping-tom grade access behind the scenes. Court No. 6 was dubbed the “party court” thanks to the bar adjacent to it. Schedulers shrewdly populated that court with players who galvanize fans.

As usual, the players received white-glove treatment and appeared to have everything—everything except privacy. This was neither surprising nor coercive. The stars of the ATP and WTA make a Faustian bargain with administrators and fans in the interest of fattening up their wallets, increasing the global reach of tennis, and ensuring that the product is credible and entertaining. But the concessions that help implement those goals are significant.

More people than ever are watching tennis. Among them, Big Brother.

When the British player Katie Boulter was asked early in the Australian Open if she was aware of the cameras, many of them providing live streams from hallways and warm-up rooms, she appeared to see the issue in a new light.

“That sounds terrible,” she said. “I don't know why someone would want to see that. I am aware of the cameras. You can see them. They are in prime locations. There's the odd time you forget ... I know if you go in the warm-up area, there is going to be a camera or something like that. But I don't think too much about it.”

In a telltale incident, No. 2 men’s seed Alexander Zverev was embroiled briefly in an officiating controversy during his quarterfinal match because the tournament had decided to forego the net cam/electronic let indicator. After the match, Zverev remarked: “I think it's, to be honest, quite ridiculous. Every single corner of everything has a camera ... but a simple let machine that we've been using for the past 25 years is not available at a Grand Slam?”

The priorities of tournament promoters have shifted, sometimes seismically, over the years. Where once there were legitimate criticisms of tournament officials for over-protecting players from fans and media, we are in the midst of an ongoing push to feed the players to the public. There seems to be no push back from the pros, who seem to subscribe to the adage that you have to “go along to get along.” In fact, they revel in their celebrity.

But the effort to boost exposure for the players in Melbourne brings the Happy Slam a step closer to the “Surveillance Slam”—even if intrusions that come along with that are not nearly as onerous as the ones created by the incredibly complicated effort to keep performance enhancing drugs out of tennis. While that’s a laudable goal, the efforts to realize it requires a suspension of privacy and unsavory, even dehumanizing tactics.

Start with the whereabouts rule, which requires that players keep the World Anti-Doping Agency updated about where they are at all times, to ensure that WADA agents can conduct out-of-competition tests whenever they choose. Going skiing in Utah for a few days? You must let WADA know. Visiting an ill aunt? Remember to tell Big Brother at WADA. Failure to report a change in location three times results in an automatic suspension— as young American Jenson Brooksby (among many others) learned the hard way in the fall of 2023. (His 18-month suspension was later reduced to three months on appeal.)

When a tester does show up unannounced, the scene can play like an episode from a dark thriller. In February of 2009, Andy Murray told reporters in Rotterdam that he had a taste of re-vamped drug-testing rules shortly after he returned home from the Australian Open. When a tester appeared at his home unannounced one morning at 7 a.m., Murray had to produce identification. The agent insisted on watching Murray provide the urine sample—“trousers 'round my ankles,” Murray said—and finally, he insisted that Murray write down his address even though the agent was in the very house.

"These new rules are so draconian that it makes it almost impossible to live a normal life,” Murray said.

World No. 1 Jannik Sinner is embroiled in a doping controversy of his own. He is adamant about his innocence and said in Melbourne that he is living in constant state of tension over what he’s ingesting. He has been since even before he tested positive.

“I was very, very careful on every single medicine I take, even what I eat," he said. "When the bottle is open, I throw it away, I take a new one. I was always very, very careful about this stuff.”

These new [anti-doping] rules are so draconian that it makes it almost impossible to live a normal life. Andy Murray

Iga Swiatek, who sat out for a month for a failed drug test (and was later exonerated of wrongdoing), takes a similar approach. She said that all of her supplements are “certified,” she even tracks the lot and batch numbers. And she keeps all the boxes of medications she uses (including melatonin, a sleep aid that is not banned) for some time after she runs out.

“They are in storage,” she said. “Now I’m keeping everything ready, just in case.”

Those may seem like relatively small sacrifices given the potential rewards of a career in tennis, and players accept the burden. Not every player enjoys the success (and rewards) experienced by a Sinner or Swiatek, but all of them must surrender the same degree of freedom and privacy.

One of the more glaring examples of potential bureaucratic overreach—a specialty of Big Brother (in this case, a potential Big Sister) is the controversy surrounding the ongoing investigation of Elena Rybakina’s coach Stefano Vukov.

Starting in 2019, Vukov helped Rybakina rise from just inside the top 200 into the top 30 in roughly 12 months. But more recently the WTA heard complaints that he was at least verbally abusive, “loud” and “harsh.” Last August, Rybakina fired Vukov but never said anything about abuse, or his coaching style. The WTA then put him under a provisional suspension pending the outcome of a private and confidential investigation.

Things did not really get hinky until Rybakina announced in early January that she was bringing Vukov back on her team for the AO. The WTA would not relent, nor did Tennis Australia issue Vukov a credential. Rybakina reiterated her position, telling reporters at a news conference: “I always said that he never mistreated me.”

This ongoing case raises all kinds of thorny questions, including how much authority—legal as well as moral—the WTA has, or should have, over how Elena Rybakina conducts her career. Sure, critics of Vukov can cite “Stockholm syndrome” as a pre-emptive explanation for Rybakina’s desire to work with him again. But that leaves Rybakina without agency, her credibility in question, even as the WTA feels it is doing the right thing.

The investigation into Vukov is yet to be concluded. You have to wonder how much longer that will take. Perhaps lawyers are crossing swords in some boardroom as you read this.

Now, that’s streaming footage that could be more interesting than a feed focused on the transportation desk at the next tournament.