As the U.S. Open culminates this week in New York City, airing on ESPN’s networks, Netflix is prepping a wider entry into tennis halfway around the world.

Netflix has acquired the rights to air the 2025 6 Kings Slam — an exhibition launched a year ago and being held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, from Oct. 15 to 18 — per an announcement from the company; its regional partner, Riyadh Season; and its production partner, IMG.

Headlining the event will be men’s world No. 1 Jannik Sinner, along with Carlos Alcaraz (his nearest rival), 24-time major champion Novak Djokovic, Alexander Zverev, Jack Draper and Taylor Fritz.

How does 6 Kings draw such big names? Well, for starters, the purse is huge: Sinner took home $6 million for winning the event last year, which is more than the winner gets for any of the major championships. Meanwhile, each competitor received $1.5 million just for showing up.

Here are a couple of notable points about this announcement.

Netflix expands live-sports portfolio

This is Netflix’s second foray into live tennis, after Netflix Slam, a 2024 exhibition featuring Alcaraz and Rafael Nadal. The 6 Kings Slam joins a live-sports roster that includes NFL Christmas Day games, a 2003 golf event (the Netflix Cup), sports-style scripted live entertainment (“WWE Raw”) and boxing events, including next week’s card featuring Canelo Alvarez versus Terence Crawford.

Netflix has made no secret of its ambition to add live sports to its programming portfolio, which has elevated the sports-media industry buzzword “eventize,” shorthand for limited-edition programming that can be marketed as an “event.” Such an event ideally has global reach that fits with Netflix’s strategy to increase its subscriber base worldwide, as well as to build its inventory of content that naturally includes advertising, for which live sports is the recognized standard.

Related to that, it is a longstanding strategy among distributors airing glamorous sports events globally to use them as an opportunity to impress and entice potential advertising partners, especially for platforms with a relatively new ad-supported business, like Netflix. Another added benefit for Netflix to lean into events rather than try to acquire long-winding seasons is that events are much less expensive to produce.

Rights to big events are scarce (if not impossible)

Rights for tennis’ traditional Grand Slam events — and even authorized lower-tier ATP-sanctioned events — are locked up with tennis’ traditional media partners for years to come: A year ago, the U.S. Open did a 12-year rights extension with ESPN; in the summer of 2024, the French Open signed a 10-year, $650 million deal with TNT Sports; and back in 2021, ESPN extended its existing deal with Wimbledon for another 12 years, through 2035. The bottom line: These Slam-level events are not available for Netflix, at any price, anytime soon.

Inventory that streaming brands like Netflix, YouTube or Amazon Prime Video can acquire will increasingly emerge from league-unsanctioned or exhibition-style events, negotiated with individual athletes. It also isn’t a coincidence that the event’s branding incorporates the most valuable word in the sport (“slam”). To be clear, the event in Riyadh is not a formal tennis “Grand Slam” event; it is an exhibition.

To be sure, ESPN and Tennis Channel are leaning toward, if not fully embracing, direct-to-consumer streaming lanes, in anticipation of the contraction of the cable audience and accompanying rights fees. Netflix, of course, is already there.

Does TKO Holdings see tennis as the next UFC?

IMG is producing the broadcast, but more interesting is who IMG’s parent company is: TKO Holdings, which has had a busy few months.

TKO also owns UFC (which just signed a billion-dollar distribution deal with Skydance/Paramount) and WWE (which just signed a billion-dollar distribution deal with ESPN). TKO has a deep, management-level partnership with Zuffa, the boxing promotional company behind Canelo-Alvarez.

TKO’s entry into tennis highlights its potential to turn other “one-on-one” sports with global appeal into components of its growing portfolio.

Are more ‘made-for-TV’ tennis exhibitions coming?

Just minutes before the Netflix announcement was emailed out, a similar exhibition tennis event was announced: “A Racquet at The Rock,” happening Dec. 7 in Newark, N.J., and featuring two matches: Alcaraz versus Frances Tiafoe and Amanda Anisimova versus Emma Raducanu. No TV or streaming partners were included in the announcement.

In January 2026, Nick Kyrgios will play Aryna Sabalenka in Hong Kong in an exhibition, a faint echo of the famous “Battle of the Sexes” between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs in 1973, a match watched by a staggering 90 million people.

— The Athletic’s Richard Deitsch, James Hansen and Andrew Marchand contributed to this report.

(Photo: Fayez Nureldine / AFP via Getty Images)