Racquet Magazine Targets the Affluent Who Don’t Yet Know They Love Tennis

Racquet Magazine, a tennis publication, isn’t for tennis people. Not initially, anyway.

The nine-year-old publication is seeking an audience and brand partners “almost exclusively coming from outside the tennis ecosystem,” according to founder Caitlin Thompson. The aim is to bring new people to the sport who are curious about tennis but feel intimidated by its traditional culture. The target audience includes sophisticated, world-traveling and taste-making individuals who are looking for high-quality storytelling, cultural context and experiences that go beyond just match results.

The company, which also runs high-end events (Racquet House), a podcast and sells merchandise (“tennis whore” t-shirt, anyone?), recently got a cash injection from Jessica Lessin, founder of The Information fame, its fourth fundraise in its history and its first major strategic investor. Thompson hopes to get Lessin’s help with increasing the number of digital subscriptions sold and retaining a valuable and engaged audience as she has done with her own business.

Thompson came from Time magazine when giant scale guided strategy. She’s now well aware that a high-value audience of several thousand can be much more valuable than mass scale. The high-end magazine has subscribers in the “low thousands,” which Thompson hopes will go to 25,000 to 30,000 eventually. So far, Racquet, which had its first profitable year in 2024, has grown through word of mouth.

“In the next year, what I hope to do is grow our subscriber base like crazy, because it’s something we’ve never focused on growing, even though we’ve been a subscription business for a really long time,” Thompson told AMO. “The thing about Racquet is really realizing all of these ambitions we had, not only to create a print magazine, a digital source of news with social and audio and multimedia content, but also a merchandise business, a licensing business where we can do partnerships with brick and mortar, maybe even running some of those brick and mortar clubs or wellness experiences.”

That also includes fantastic trips to hard to access destinations—the target audience does not blink at price tags. In fact, Racquet Magazine is more likely to appear at Art Basel than at the Cincinnati Open, Thompson said.

Is Your Brand Good Enough for Racquet?

Because of its focus on a private jet-flying kind of audience, advertising is likewise high-brow.

“You can never buy an ad in the magazine, but you can work with Racquet if we let you in the front door because we know our audience would like what you’re selling,” Thompson said.

That extends to branded experiences, too. For example, in 2023, around the U.S. Open finals, Evian, the official water of the event, and Maria Sharapova took over a Circle Line Cruise boat to host a floating tennis court. Sharapova spoke with Racquet’s “cultural attaché” Andrea Petkovic at the event, which turned into a podcast episode. Influencers were invited to play tennis on the boat while it circled the harbor.

Not all brands are welcome at Racquet, and Thompson said sometimes it’s enough to give them sticker shock with pricing, which deals with a lot of the riff raff. It’s something missing in tennis, which lacks the glamour of an apres ski cocktail party, which Racquet held recently at Indian Wells during the BNP Paribas Open.

“Anything that we do that feels experiential needs to feel really special and really unique,” Thompson said. “Anytime we do something, it needs to matter. It needs to stand out.”

Racquet’s story hasn’t been without drama, with the former editor of the print magazine departing over disagreements about growth strategy. David Shaftel preferred remaining focused on its media niche where Thompson has ambitious and bold plans to have lines of products with brands and tennis trips.

After Lessin’s recent investment, the company’s valuation is in the low eight figures. More than 30% of revenue, which is in the low six figures, is agency (read: advertising), with the rest dominated equally by subscriptions and merchandising/licensing.

Those last categories will be “the last thing to fall into place, which is the hardest and will take the most capital, but will ultimately prove to be the most valuable part of our company,” Thompson said. Racquet has previously launched lines with Adidas and a clothing collection with Sergio Tacchini, which sells “elevated athleisure.” “I don’t think it’s crazy to think it will grow at least 50 to 75% this year. We’re already tracking well above our projections.”