Survey says... This question was posed to conference attendees and Turnkey Sports Poll panelists. Here's what they said.

Q. To grow it's audience in the U.S., what does pro tennis need to do? General population: 47% "Not sure" 23% "Dominant U.S. player (like Tiger)" 12% "More U.S. players winning" 12% "More U.S.-based tournaments" 7% "A rivalry between U.S. players" Industry insiders: 52% "Dominant U.S. player" 22% "A rivalry between U.S. players" 19% "More U.S. players winning" 4% "More U.S.-based tournaments" 3% "Not sure" Margin of error +/- equal or greater than 3.0%

By Liza Horan

You already know the latest superlatives about tennis: Maria Sharapova is the highest paid female athlete. Tennis was the fastest growing traditional sport for participation in the United States since 2000. The U.S. Open is the biggest annual sporting event in the world. Tennis was the first sport to provide equal prize money for men and women*.

That's just a few of greatest attributes about the sport.

There are a couple with pretty unfortunate attributes, too: Tennis is the biggest global sport with the smallest amount of media coverage in the U.S. Tennis is the greatest individual and team sport with the most cooks in the kitchen.

All of these points were discussed during a special session at the IMG World Congress of Sports in Miami earlier this month. No other sport was the exclusive subject of panel discussion during the two-day event except tennis. Fitting, since both the conference and the Sony Ericsson Open are owned by IMG. But that's not all—tennis has much to tell.

And so it got the chance. Sony Ericsson's Aldo Liguori, outgoing Sony Ericsson WTA Tour CEO Larry Scott, IMG tennis chief Fernando Soler, Tennis Channel CEO Ken Solomon, ATP World Tour CEO Mark Young and USTA head of player development and Davis Cup captain Patrick McEnroe, who also works for ESPN, took the stage to field questions from Abraham Madkour, the executive editor of SportsBusiness Journal and SportsBusiness Daily.

The crew talked about the growth of the game, the popularity of pros who transcend the sport to pop culture icons, how to gain more visibility for the game in America, the attractive demographics of fans and players to sponsors, and the alphabet soup that runs the game.

Scott, who worked in key roles at both the ATP and WTA tours, said the inability of pro tennis to integrate further than what they have done (more combined events, sharing resources) contributed to his decision to leave the sport and join the PAC-10 Conference.

Everyone admitted that trying to move the various governing bodies—ATP, WTA, WTT, ITF, etc.—under one banner would be ideal, but extremely difficult.

As McEnroe stated, the system isn't perfect, but it's the system we have and it's working.

Perhaps the sport's greatest attribute—it's shear scale worldwide—is also its greatest challenge.

*at major events