This is the best time ever to seek a global partnership with Facebook… not in spite of their crises around the issue of privacy, but because of them.

First, the worst is almost certainly over, and whatever surprises lie in wait, if any, will be swamped by the tidal wave of response that CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his company have mounted to right the Facebook ship in the stormy waters of consumer and government concern.

A quick look at this chart will help to understand why:

Facebook’s overall growth has hardly stuttered in spite of the gales of world-wide controversy that have blown for more than two years. No need to recount them… we all know about them.

Take a closer look at that chart, though, and you’ll notice that growth is almost flat in the US, Canada, and Europe, primarily because of market saturation.

Most of their growth comes from Asia-Pacific and the rest of the world, and you will notice that their US growth has been absolutely flat since their privacy scandals exploded, in 2017.

With over 2.4 billion monthly active users, the company dwarfs any other organised group in the world, including nations and religions, but in fact they have billions more people to engage, even given China’s resistance, and for financial and personal reasons, Zuckerberg is completely committed to doing that.

Dealing with their privacy issues are costly, but not nearly as costly as allowing their growth to slow.

They will not allow that to happen. So, they will solve their problems, and as soon as humanly possible. They have to.

The other thing that they must do is to catch the next big wave in social connection, virtual reality.

They must do it, not because they will thereby gain new adherents, especially in their growth geographies.

They must do it because they believe that they will need to do it to RETAIN their position in their most valuable advertising geography: the US, Canada, and Europe.

This conclusion required no Silicon Valley sleuthing. Zuckerberg has been completely open about his belief that the future of social connection will be in virtual reality.

To make that happen, he needs what we have: a global infrastructure of motivated people with a shared interest: sport, and particularly tennis.

This infrastructure of common interest is a scaffolding on which he can build a very big part of his consumer vision. Our interests are mutual, because we want to expand this infrastructure with technology, the technology in which Facebook happens to be by far the global leader: the Oculus Quest and the massive eco-system that they are building around it.

Facebook is Leading the Virtual Reality Mass Adoption Parade, and We Can Help.

The Range of Mutually Beneficial Connections and Opportunities is Immense.

We can work with them to build a global Virtual Sport competition platform, to replace their struggling VR League.

And they could create the best possible showpiece for their Horizon virtual community by working with the IOC and International Federations to build a Virtual Olympic Village, thereby making even more history.

Then… there’s this.

And, oh yeah… THIS.

Why Not Facebook as a TOP Sponsor?

It would, it seems, help them with VR adoption and PR as much as it would help us with VR, social resources and other expertise.

Their brief could easily be drawn to include Virtual Sport and Social Networking, which would keep them well clear of Alibaba, Intel and Samsung, and their social networking and VR social space ambitions would be well and exclusively applied to building the Virtual Olympic Village.

Why not?