Tennis West has celebrated what it describes as a strong first year under its 2025–2028 Strategic Plan, highlighting increased participation, revenue growth and what it says is its highest club satisfaction result in eight years.
But behind the headline figures lies an important question that deserves considerably greater scrutiny:
How representative are the satisfaction results being promoted by Tennis West?
On 31 August, Tennis West released its Year One strategic results, announcing that overall stakeholder satisfaction had reached 7.6 out of 10, while club satisfaction had reached 7.8 out of 10 — its highest level in eight years.
The organisation described the results as evidence of strong progress across its strategic priorities.
However, an earlier Tennis West release detailing its 2026 Customer Satisfaction Survey revealed an important piece of information that should form part of any assessment of those claims.
Only 95 clubs and councils completed the CSAT survey.
Tennis West itself reports that it supports approximately 195 affiliated clubs and venues across Western Australia.
Western Australia also has 139 local governments.
That potentially represents a very substantial stakeholder pool against which just 95 completed responses have been reported.
It should be made clear that simply dividing 95 by the combined number of clubs and councils does not establish the true response rate, because Tennis West has not publicly disclosed in its announcement exactly how many organisations were invited, how the sample was constructed, or how many responses came from clubs compared with councils.
And that is precisely the point.
Where Is The Detail?
If Tennis West is going to publicly promote the result as the best club satisfaction score in eight years, shouldn’t WA tennis stakeholders also be entitled to see enough information to judge how representative that score actually is?
How many affiliated clubs were sent the survey?
How many responded?
How many metropolitan clubs participated?
How many regional clubs participated?
How many local governments responded?
Which categories of affiliates were represented?
What percentage of Tennis West’s total affiliated membership was represented by the clubs completing the survey?
Were the State’s largest clubs represented?
And what was the actual response rate among those invited?
These are not unreasonable questions. They are fundamental questions when survey results are being used as evidence of organisational performance.
Court Talk has heard from a number of clubs that say they either did not participate in the survey or do not recall receiving an opportunity to complete it.
We also understand that Tennis West’s largest affiliated club was not represented among the responses.
If correct, that raises an obvious question.
How can a survey be presented as an authoritative measure of club sentiment when significant affiliates — potentially including the organisation’s largest affiliate — are not represented?
That does not necessarily mean the satisfaction score is wrong.
It does mean stakeholders should be given enough information to understand exactly what the number represents.
A Score Is Only As Useful As The Sample Behind It
Survey data can be valuable.
It can help sporting organisations identify areas of strength, uncover weaknesses and measure whether relationships with stakeholders are improving.
But headline satisfaction scores have limitations.
A score of 7.8 sounds impressive.
The description “highest in eight years” sounds even more impressive.
But without understanding the composition of the respondents, the number invited, the response rate, weighting methodology and the size and nature of organisations that did not participate, it is difficult for members to independently assess how confidently that result can be extrapolated across WA tennis.
There is an enormous difference between saying:
“The clubs that responded reported the highest satisfaction level in eight years.”
and saying, or allowing the public to infer:
“WA tennis clubs are the most satisfied they have been in eight years.”
Those are not necessarily the same proposition.
That distinction matters.
Performance Metrics Can Tell Different Stories
This becomes particularly important when sporting organisations increasingly use dashboards, strategic KPIs and satisfaction scores to demonstrate performance.
Statistics can be presented in many different ways.
Participation can include club members, school participants, coaching participants, event participants, casual players and people taking part in introductory programs.
Team numbers can increase while the number of individual adult competition players moves differently.
Revenue can increase without necessarily demonstrating improvements in every area of service delivery.
Likewise, stakeholder satisfaction can rise within a survey sample while substantial parts of the stakeholder community may not have participated at all.
None of this automatically invalidates Tennis West’s reported performance.
But it reinforces why transparency around the methodology matters just as much as the headline number.
If Tennis West genuinely believes these results demonstrate significant improvement, there should be no downside in publishing the supporting information.
The Board Has A Responsibility Too
This is also not simply an operational issue.
Tennis West is the State Sporting Association responsible for governing tennis in Western Australia.
Its Board has a responsibility to oversee the organisation’s strategy, performance, governance and accountability.
When performance results are publicly promoted, the Board should ensure that those measures are robust, transparent and capable of being understood by the members whose organisation it governs.
The Board’s responsibility should extend beyond accepting attractive dashboard figures.
Directors should be asking:
What sits behind the number?
How was it calculated?
Who participated?
Who didn’t?
Is the sample sufficiently representative?
Are we providing members with enough information to independently assess the result?
Strong governance requires more than celebrating favourable metrics.
It requires being equally willing to expose those metrics to scrutiny.
Tennis West Should Publish The Full Picture
Tennis West reported in June that club satisfaction had reached 7.9, while its 31 August strategic update reports the figure as 7.8.
That minor difference itself deserves clarification.
More importantly, Tennis West should consider publishing the complete CSAT methodology and breakdown, including:
- The total number of clubs and councils invited to participate.
- The separate response numbers for clubs and local governments.
- The overall response rate.
- Metropolitan and regional response numbers.
- The size or membership profile of participating clubs.
- Whether responses were anonymous.
- Whether results were weighted.
- The comparable response numbers for each of the previous eight years.
- The methodology used to determine the historical comparison.
- Whether major affiliates were represented in the survey.
Providing this information would not undermine a positive result.
It would strengthen it.
If the score genuinely demonstrates broad improvement in Tennis West’s relationship with its affiliated clubs, greater transparency would provide the evidence to support that conclusion.
Trust Comes From Transparency
Tennis West has every right to celebrate areas in which it believes it is improving.
Its latest strategic update points to increased participation, more than $5 million in annual revenue, club-health improvements and increased stakeholder satisfaction.
Those achievements should be acknowledged where the underlying evidence supports them.
But a governing body should also expect scrutiny when it uses selected performance measures to tell stakeholders how successfully it is performing.
The question is therefore not whether a score of 7.8 or 7.9 is a good result.
Clearly, among the respondents surveyed, it is.
The bigger question is:
How much confidence should WA’s tennis community place in that score as a reflection of the entire affiliated club network?
With only 95 club and council responses publicly identified, and with Court Talk hearing that a number of clubs — including a major affiliate — were not represented, Tennis West should provide considerably greater detail before portraying the survey as evidence of sentiment across WA tennis.
Transparency is particularly important for an organisation whose own stated values include Integrity, Respect and Teamwork.
If Tennis West has achieved its best club satisfaction result in eight years, then publish the full methodology.
Publish the response rate.
Publish the breakdown.
Explain who was surveyed.
Explain how representative the respondents were.
And allow the tennis community to judge the results for itself.
Because ultimately, confidence in a governing body’s performance should not depend simply on the numbers it chooses to publish.
It should depend on how openly those numbers can withstand scrutiny.
