London, June 30: In the glory days of L!ve TV, the red top-inspired television channel, a show called Topless Darts attracted a certain amount of attention. Its concept, half-naked women paying darts, was based on the simple idea that a combination of sport and sexual titillation would be a ratings winner.
Topless Darts disappeared from the screens in 1999 but, 10 years on, there is a new and profitable version of the same basic formula. It is called the Wimbledon Tennis Championships.
No other sport, with the possible exception of beach volleyball, has been more comprehensively hijacked by the marketing of sex than professional tennis. The potential for exploitation has always been there. Back in the 1970s, the most popular Athena poster was of the famous bum-scratching, knickerless Tennis Girl. More recently, newspapers have loved to run candid on-court photographs of young, attractive female players as they stretch adorably – and revealingly – to make a shot.
–Agencies