- Raducanu and Fernandez’s extraordinary roads converge
- Analysis: Why Raducanu’s run to final is no fluke
- Fernandez shows hopeful side of Canada’s tennis dream
- Email Bryan with your thoughts or tweet him @BryanAGraham
In a very short time, Radumania has transcended the sports pages. Here’s the business angle of Emma Raducanu’s fairytale run to today’s final. The short version: the sky’s the limit.
Tim Crow, a sports marketing consultant who advised Coca-Cola on football sponsorship for two decades, said: “I haven’t had this many calls from clients, major brands, who are interested in her since Lewis Hamilton broke through in Formula One. If she wins she will become one of the hottest properties in British sport, if not the hottest.”
Crow said Raducanu’s combination of youth, sporting prowess, charismatic personality and international appeal – she was born in Canada to parents from Romania and China and is a product of the British tennis system – makes her commercial gold for brands. She has a shoe and clothing contract with Nike and racquet sponsorship with Wilson.
Related: Raducanu set for global media stardom, say UK marketing experts
Today’s match is the first US Open final between teenagers since 1999, when Serena Williams saw off Martina Hingis for the first of the American’s 23 career major titles. Our Tumaini Carayol has written about their unlikely convergence today in the world’s biggest tennis stadium and what it means for the sport moving forward.
Over the past 20 years, as memories of Martina Hingis, Venus Williams and Serena Williams battling for glory in grand slam finals as teens faded deep into the memory of professional tennis, it soon became clear that the era of teenage supernovas had abated.
While there have been numerous anomalies since, including the recent triumphs of Bianca Andreescu and Iga Swiatek, with the rise of technology and augmenting physicality within the sport teenagers have been brushed aside.
Related: Emma Raducanu and Leylah Fernandez usher in dynamic new era | Tumaini Carayol
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