What Happened to Prince Tennis?

Prince Classic

It's the 70's tennis boom in America.  Jimmy Connors and Chris Evert are America's sweethearts.  Everyone is wearing a pair Stan Smith Adidas tennis shoes and warm-up suits.  Arthur Ashe is becoming a great activist and humanitarian.  All these American tennis greats were the focus of the tennis world in the 70's.  And if you were playing tennis, the racquet of choice was a Prince Classic, a symbol of the era's tennis culture.  The "original" Prince Classic was an aluminum-framed, oversized racquet introduced by Howard Head in 1976.  Its popularity soared, becoming the weapon of choice for a number of pro players, like Pam Shriver, who harnessed its large sweet spot for power and control.  By the early 80s, Prince had captured more than 25% of the tennis market.  Everyone, everywhere on a tennis court, had a Prince racquet or wanted to play with one.  Prince Tennis was a leading tennis company that introduced new technologies in materials, design, and usage.

As global competition intensified, Prince Tennis, in a bid to diversify its market, made several corporate acquisitions, expanding its product range to include footwear, apparel, strings, stringing machines, and other tennis-related gear.  The company also ventured into the racquetball and golf industries, introducing Ektelon paddles and Grafalloy golf club shafts. However, these strategic moves were not enough to counter the financial challenges. Prince Tennis eventually became a subsidiary of Benetton Sports Systems, and its economic woes persisted under the ownership of various firms, including Lincolnshire Management and Nautic Partners LLC.  Prince's decision to sell exclusively through Tennis Warehouse in the global market also contributed to its diminishing presence in the tennis world.

In May 2012, Prince Sports filed a voluntary petition for Chapter 11 reorganization in the US Bankruptcy Court with $60 million in secured debt[RT1]. The company "Authentic Brands" acquired Prince's secured debt and took over the likes of it and other popular brands like Reebok, Champion, Nautica, Brooks Brothers, Eddie Bauer, IZOD, Quicksilver, Neiman Marcus, Saks 5th Avenue, and Thomasville.

As a part of their marketing and sales, Prince and other racquet companies partnered themselves with prominent top tennis pros.  The top players became the face of the companies that represented them, and the racquets that they used were a major reason behind the sales of their racquets…image is everything.  With racquet companies following this standard marketing strategy, the most popular racquets being sold could be attributed to the most popular or successful players on tour (i.e., Roger Federer – Wilson Pro Staff or Rafael Nadal – Baboblat Pure Aero).  Baboblat, the oldest string company in the world, entered the racquet competition in the middle 90s and followed a similar pattern in marketing their racquets.  The popularity of their line of racquets, starting with Pure Drive, slowly began to erode the market dominance of other racquet company giants like Wilson, Head, and Yonex.  All of these factors slowly invaded Prince's marketplace on the world stage.  And with the prominence of other successful frames being used by the top pros (see Roger and Rafa), Prince was no longer the darling of the tennis world that it once was.  As the top pros stopped playing with Prince (American John Isner was one of the last big players to play Prince), so did the local players. 

The difficulty in stringing the O3 and XO3 technologies, despite their innovative and effective nature in enhancing racquet performance, played a significant role in the decline of Prince Tennis.  If your local pro shop struggles to string your racquet, they are less likely to promote or sell it.