Coco Gauff is ruining the people of Rome right now, focusing on just how badly the tennis video game is destroying one of the greatest windows of all time. It feels like every serve, every comeback, every noisy night session at the Foro Italico during the Italian Open should already be available for fans to play, not just capture in a clip on social media. Instead, a genre that should be ready to pounce is strangely quiet. Gauff is basically giving the publisher a built-in protagonist, an established fan base, and real drama that already reads like story mode material, and no one seems to be rushing anything. The sport finally has a star that regular fans can recognize. People obviously want to see her, and gaming is still the only part of her that remains on the sidelines anyway.
Tennis has been inching towards this kind of mainstream era for some time, and Gauff has been at the center of it from the beginning. In 2019, she defeated five-time Wimbledon champion Venus Williams in straight sets as a 15-year-old. This match was considered a true changing of the guard. Afterwards, she made 'Promising Teen' a 'constant problem' throughout the rest of the tour. She won her first Slam singles title at a US Open event in 2023 and became the first American woman to win the French Open since Serena in 2015 when she defeated world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka at Roland Garros in 2025. Off the court she is just as dangerous. She topped Forbes' 2025 list of highest-paid female athletes, with most of her $30 million-plus coming from brands like New Balance, Mercedes-Benz, and Rolex, and analysts routinely call her the world's most marketable tennis player.
EA Games is officially over
Longtime publisher Electronic Arts has permanently shut down a spinoff game from one of its biggest EA Sports franchises.
Tennis video games are stuck in the past.
This is why the state of the tennis game feels strangely small right now. One “serious” series; top spinIt's basically been gone for over 10 years. The franchise has since gone quiet. top spin 4 Released in 2011, it returns with: Topspin 2K25 That entire gap covers the length of time football, basketball, and soccer players have had something new to look forward to. FIFA or NBA 2K Every season. when Topspin 2K25 Finally, my initial impressions and follow-up reviews on OpenCritic all landed in the same place. The rallies feel good, the core tennis is there but Topspin 2K25 It ships with a small roster and there isn't much to do. Outlets are looking at how many big ATP and WTA names are missing, and Reddit threads like this first roster look and this roster complaint thread are basically people asking why the long-defunct series looks semi-staffed.
There's a real reason behind it, but it also turned into a convenient shield. In tennis, there is no single players' association or central league agreement that covers everyone like the NFLPA or NBPA. crazy crazy and NBA 2K. The Professional Tennis Players Association makes it clear that players are independent contractors and own their own names, images and likenesses, so studios wanting realistic rosters will have to negotiate many individual deals. The fans Topspin 2K The community involved in this licensing discussion is well aware that it is expensive and messy, especially for tennis series such as: top spin I'm trying to start again. But look at the money. Reports on the sports video games market talk about a space worth tens of billions of dollars, like soccer games. EA Sports FC It's at the top, followed closely by soccer and basketball, while tennis barely registers. Put these two next to each other and the phrase “licensing is hard” starts to sound less like a hard stop and more like a reason not to try harder.
Meanwhile, Gauff is already having a match that feels like it was written for an EA Sports game cutscene. She opened the 2026 Italian Open by dropping the first set to Solana Sierra before dominating the second set 6-0 to close out the final set. Her next match was against teenager Iva Jovic, where Garp saved a match point and turned things around in a third-set grind that was said to be seriously tense. From there, she worked her way through Mirra Andreeva in the quarters and then beat Sorana Cirstea, who had just eliminated world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka, to advance to back-to-back Italian Open finals. This match earned her a new WTA record for wins on clay at the WTA 1000 level at her age. If that exact arc were written into career mode, no one would complain about the story being over-the-top because it's already that neat.
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This is all very frustrating because the audience is clearly not the issue. Research into the sports gaming market shows steady growth, with soccer, basketball and especially soccer continuing to be active as usual, while tennis continues to be classified as a “niche” market. But when you look at mobile tennis games, that label falls apart. team behind tennis clash stated that the game has attracted more than 170 million players worldwide, and Winners Alliance's 2025 press release announced that it is finally adding officially licensed pros. This should have happened years ago. When you put it all together, the picture becomes very simple. People will definitely show up to a tennis game and stick around if the game is actually good. The problem is not demand. The thing is, no one has actually run for the fence yet.
