It is being billed as the biggest single commercial contract in the history of women’s sport, albeit one that spans 10 years. But the sums are significant: a total of $535m (£340m) to the women’s tennis tour for the broadcast rights to every tournament in its annual calendar.

The newly signed deal, between the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) and Perform, a British media company, will bring full coverage of 54 events a year, more than twice the 22 currently televised.

It is a substantial commitment for all concerned. Perform will be obliged to arrange broadcast coverage of all 2,000 or so singles matches a year in the WTA tour, as well as semi-finals and finals in the doubles, and will in turn sell on the footage to TV companies, websites and mobile operators.

Those involved in the deal are hailing it as a massive step in the global popularity of women’s tennis, as well as a marker post in the wider advance of female sport. “In terms of the output and the content we can offer, it’s an absolute step change. It’s massive,” said Heather Bowler of the WTA. “This is a defining moment not just for women’s tennis, but for women’s sport in general.”

One of the drivers for the deal, Bowler said, was the current excitement and competitiveness of the women’s game, where established stars such as Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova are being pushed hard by the likes of Eugenie Bouchard, the young Canadian player who reached this year’s Wimbledon final, and Simona Halep, the Romanian world No 3.

“Even if you spoke to Billie Jean King she’d say she’s not seen this amount of excitement around women’s tennis in decades,” Bowler said. “I think sports marketing has traditionally looked at men’s sport, but now they’re, hopefully, taking notice of women’s sport, and seeing it as an investment opportunity. It’s been underexposed and underinvested in, and now things are changing.”

Women’s sport as a wider prospect has long been something of a commercial backwater. A report by the charity Women in Sport found that in 2013 the top five UK sponsorship deals signed for men’s sport totalled £590m. The equivalent figure for women was £1.4m.

But things are moving. Last month the England women’s football team played Germany in front of 55,000 fans at Wembley, in a game shown live on BBC2 – even if wages for the female players remain tiny compared with those of men.

Women’s tennis has largely fared better, not least through the efforts of the WTA, set up by Billie Jean King in 1973, in part because of massive prize money differentials between male and female players. The battle for parity with the men’s game has been long, with Wimbledon first awarding equal prize money only in 2007.

Perform took over the current broadcast arrangements for the WTA tour last year, and will begin the expanded coverage from 2017, sharing any profits over a certain level with the WTA. Simon Denyer, joint chief executive of the west London-based company, said tennis was attractive in the era of 24-hour sport channels, in part due to its near-endless schedule.

He said: “There aren’t that many sports properties that play almost every week of the year, and almost every day of those weeks. The broadcasters all want more live programming throughout the week. There’s plenty on Saturdays and Sundays, and the WTA have semi-finals and finals at the weekend, but there’s also good programming throughout the week.”

Perform already sells WTA coverage on a country-by-country basis in many places, notably Europe, something helped by the geographical diversity of the women’s tour, which currently has ten different nationalities in the top ten.

Denyer said: “What works well with tennis is that pretty much all the big European countries have all got someone in the top 40 or 50. BT Sport got behind Heather Watson, and did an endorsement deal with her. Then one of the main Polish TV stations bought the rights and are focusing on their players.”

Tim Crow from Synergy, a sports sponsorship consultancy, said the deal would help “spread the WTA brand”, bringing in not just TV money but associated advertising and sponsorship revenue.

“Tennis has always been in the vanguard of women’s sport, because of what Billie Jean King did,” he said. “She blazed a trail across a range of measures, notably prize money, but also coverage. But with women’s sport, while there’s definitely been momentum worldwide, not least in the UK, about the increased need for coverage, everybody else is still playing catch-up with tennis.”