Tennis API – Accented Characters in Player Names

We've added support for accented characters (diacritical marks) in all tennis player names across our Tennis API.

Player names are now returned with full Unicode (UTF-8) encoding, so characters like å, é, ñ, and ü appear correctly wherever a name is used. For example, Lehecka, Jiri is now returned as Lehečka, Jiří in every instance his name appears. See the samples below.

Access this feature by setting the language_code parameter to en_us. The standard en code continues to return names in plain ASCII (e.g., Lehecka, Jiri). All other fields are returned in English — player names are the only values affected by this code.

⭐ Benefit

Use these updated names to show players' names correctly wherever they appear in your application.

📋 Recommended Actions

• Request player names with diacritical marks by setting the language_code parameter to en_us. The default en returns names in plain ASCII.
• Verify your application, database, and any downstream systems handle UTF-8 encoding so accented characters render correctly rather than as garbled text.
• Review any exact-string matching or search logic on player names, since names that were previously plain ASCII may now include diacritical marks.
• Update cached or stored player names to pick up the corrected spellings.

☑️ Sample Requests:

Competitor Profile Endpoint

curl --request GET \
     --url https://api.sportradar.com/tennis/trial/v3/en_us/competitors/sr:competitor:339377/profile.json \
     --header 'accept: application/json' \
     --header 'x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY'

Rankings Endpoint

curl --request GET \
     --url https://api.sportradar.com/tennis/trial/v3/en_us/rankings.json \
     --header 'accept: application/json' \
     --header 'x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY'

🔢 Products

🔁 Endpoints Affected

This affects all Tennis API endpoints that return player.name, or for doubles competitions, competitor.name — including Competitor Profile, Competitor Summaries, Competitor vs Competitor, Daily Summaries, Doubles Competitions Played, Doubles Competitor Rankings, Doubles Race Rankings, Doubles Rankings, Live Summaries, Season Info, Season Summaries, Season Probabilities, Sport Event Summary, and Sport Event Timeline.

⚙️ Return Samples

{
    "generated_at": "2026-07-31T14:57:24+00:00",
    "competitor": {
        "id": "sr:competitor:339377",
        "name": "Lehečka, Jiří",
        "country": "Czechia",
        "country_code": "CZE",
        "abbreviation": "LEH",
        "gender": "male"
    },
    "info": {
        "handedness": "right",
        "highest_singles_ranking": 12,
        "highest_doubles_ranking": 133,
        "date_of_birth": "2001-11-08",
        "highest_singles_ranking_date": "05.2026",
        "highest_doubles_ranking_date": "10.2025"
    },
    ...

<ranking type_id="5" name="ATP" year="2026" week="31" gender="men">
    <competitor_rankings>
        <competitor_ranking rank="1" movement="0" points="6890">
            <competitor id="sr:competitor:1119767" name="Heliövaara H / Patten H" abbreviation="Heliövaara H / Patten H">
                <players>
                    <player id="sr:competitor:14898" name="Heliövaara, Harri" country="Finland" country_code="FIN" abbreviation="HEL"/>
                    <player id="sr:competitor:637970" name="Patten, Henry" country="Great Britain" country_code="GBR" abbreviation="PAT"/>
                </players>
            </competitor>
        </competitor_ranking>
    ...