Ping pong for the masses: Bringing an old sport to a brand new audience with World Table Tennis By Heather McLean
Thursday, April 4, 2024 - 15:23
Print This Story
Stunning light shows at the WTT's Singapore Smash 2024 are reminiscent of an esports arena
Table tennis, ping pong and whiff whaff These are the names that this well-known sport, famed for its popularity in China, is known as. Table tennis is starting to evolve towards a broader fan base thanks to World Table Tennis (WTT), which is the commercial arm of governing body, the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF). It was created just three years ago to grow the sport globally.
Explains Melissa Soobratty, senior media director at WTT: We realised that if we didn't do something, we were in danger of the sport stagnating. This was an opportunity for us to take a moment and think, okay, what could we do? How can we change things to make it more relatable, more entertaining, more innovative, more exciting? .
WTT recently renewed and expanded its partnership with global sports video production and distribution agency, Story10 - part of SNTV to promote the sport in key territories and engage new audiences worldwide. Now in the relationship's second year, Story10 is tasked with amplifying game highlights from the 2024 Championships and WTT's marquee Grand Smash, Finals and Champions events, across its network of 8,500 digital and social channels and 700 broadcast partners.
Read more: Smashing padel: Inside Aurora's innovative production of the inaugural Hexagon Cup
SNTV is a joint venture between The Associated Press and IMG. Story10 was launched by SNTV in 2021, supported by SNTV's global distribution network. Meanwhile, IMG is the WTT's production partner for the series.
Story10 puts out anything between two and six video news releases every day of a WTT event. Comments Zoe Duffelen, global head of revenue at SNTV's Story10: It was the perfect partnership for us, just because WTT were in the place where it was almost like a blank canvas. We were learning as we were going, so we were able to develop what our offering was going to be to our news wires, across the SNTV news wires.
Also, for the first time the expanded partnership will see Story10 and WTT develop a pilot project to create authentic influencer collaborations that increase the sport's exposure and engagement with new audiences across social platforms, utilising Story10's network of 7.5 million influencers worldwide.
At the WTT Singapore Smash 2024, players step out of the octagon and take a long walk down the catwalk and into the Infinity Arena. Sports presentations with lights, LEDs, and original composed signature music help with the atmospheric build up
Pushing ping pong
Soobratty explains how WTT is helping to push table tennis as a popular sport outside of China: In China it's more than just a sport. It's really embedded within the culture. So it's bigger, I guess even bigger than how football is in the UK, and they're pretty good at it. To become a table tennis player for China, you are really, really tested from a very young age in terms of spotted and then trained. The resources that they have and that they invest in training the players are second to none.
Now we're seeing things grow [globally]. WTT was created in 2021 when there was a realisation that we really needed to do something to continue the growth of the sport and to change the perception that it was an Asian or Chinese sport.
There are a lot of players from all over the world, whether it's Hugo Calderano from Brazil, Patrick Franziska and Dima Ovtcharov from Germany, Bruna Takahashi, also from Brazil, Adriana D az, Puerto Rico, Kamal Achanta from India. So it's a lot more global than people realise. It's just the fact that China's really good at winning that means they always hit the main headlines, continues Soobratty.
She goes on: Over the last 12 months we've seen the rise of France and the Lebrun brothers come up. As a result of that, and also as a result of the wider coverage that.
Crew from IMG working hard to broadcast the Singapore Smash 2024
Aims of whiff whaff
On the goals and aims of the WTT, Soobratty says: We really want to change how the sport is seen and perceived because traditionally it's a load of tables in a sport hall, and you see how other sports have been moving, especially towards embracing entertainment. So it's not just the action that's taking place on court, on the table, it's giving your fans and the public value for money, because these days when you buy a ticket for a sports event, it's not cheap, so we wanted to make sure that we were giving value, but also bridging that gap from participation to actually watching the pro's and growing the sport from a grassroots level, all the way up to the top.
We have a programme called From Day One to World Number One, and that's reflected in the series of events that we have. So the series that sold for commercial rights is the WTT series, but then we have two tiers below that as well: you have the feeder series and then the youth series, which is under 11 to under 19.
Adds Soobratty: The grassroots side is so important for us. India is going great guns; on the youth side they have a cracking team. And results-wise, the team is just getting stronger and stronger. So I predict in the next five years there will be other challenges to China outside of Japan and Korea and France, etc. It's one of those sports that you can play for life.
Smashing times
Soobratty comments that with Story10, that fan base and the reach of WTT content is expanding rapidly. This is the third year we've done the Smash, and from having started last year with Story10, we have seen the increase in numb
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Ping pong for the masses: Bringing an old sport to a brand new audience with World Table Tennis By Heather McLean 
