Sports activities rights-holders have confirmed more and more adept at attracting tastemakers and trendsetters to the viewing gallery. That gravitational pull has confirmed instrumental in bringing broadcaster cash and industrial sponsorship money to tournaments and competitions, with their more and more uncommon entry to mass, extremely engaged and sometimes prosperous audiences taking over an outsized significance for client manufacturers.
During the last decade, Australian Open CEO Craig Tiley has labored exhausting to take the primary tennis grand slam occasion of the 12 months from one other cease on the tennis circuit to a “bucket checklist occasion,” by taking management of each media manufacturing and the cultural circus that surrounds the game. The Australian Open is now the best-attended of tennis’s main occasions and produces different tournaments, such because the Laver Cup. And in help of its ongoing job to tempt extra American sports activities followers to jump over the Pacific and attend in particular person, the Open’s begun staging wild card video games and fan occasions throughout the U.S.
Talking to Digiday in San Francisco, the place the Laver Cup is being staged this 12 months, Tiley defined how the Open has carved out a cultural area of interest.
This interview has been frivolously edited for readability.
Sports activities occasions like System One, soccer and tennis at the moment are additionally main cultural moments. How has the Open managed to harness that?
We festivalized the game.
We made a acutely aware determination to increase [the Australian Open] far past a tennis occasion — make it about an expertise, make it about leisure.
In our first 12 months, we had over 80 bands over the course of two weeks. It’s now prolonged to a three-week occasion. We added meals: the gastronomic expertise in Melbourne is fairly superior, most likely among the many finest on this planet. This 12 months, we’re including a magnificence and wellness pillar. We dabbled just a little bit prior to now with Mecca Cosmetica, Australia’s largest magnificence model, and we’ll be actually ramping that up this 12 months.
One of many challenges that I do placed on the group is that the occasion needs to be 50% totally different from 12 months to 12 months. If you happen to are available 2025 … at a minimal, your expertise goes to be fully totally different in 2026. If you happen to get pleasure from music, when you get pleasure from meals, when you’d like to go to Australia, then we’ve received one thing for you. It’s the most important occasion in Australia, [and ] it’s the most important annual sporting occasion within the southern hemisphere.
Now we have over 800 gamers that come to the Australian Open. This 12 months, 1.2 million followers got here by means of the gate over these three weeks. It’s the most-attended of the grand slams and we’ve constructed it to be about greater than watching nice tennis, however about having a good time.
Within the first occasion, the precedence was publicity: how will we elevate and the way will we amplify the AO model to one thing that turns into aspirational? The very first thing we actually needed to do was inform tales. We advised these tales by means of gaining management of our manufacturing rights [which were previously outsourced]. That turned to partnerships. Once I began 10 years in the past, most of our model partnerships have been Australian. In the present day, I feel we solely have one or two. We’ve now purposely gone after world partnerships. [Commercial partners include New Balance, Marriott, Mastercard, Chubb and Mars].
The second goal is [to] incentivize an viewers to return to Melbourne. Visitation from the US has been rising exponentially, particularly from the west coast because it’s one flight to Melbourne. If you happen to’re a die-hard tennis fan, you’re going to go to all 4 slams and we’re going to be on the checklist. Folks generally have a tendency to attend to go to the Australian Open, as a result of [it’s] additional. However we’re discovering now that an increasing number of individuals need to come.
The third goal was to make it possible for each participant was in Australia for your entire month of January. We made a giant funding in compensation prize cash. In the present day, we provide over $120 million in prize cash. You’ve received the expertise there, you’ve received the platform to do it, and then you definately’re gonna get to the individuals to return.
What does the tour you’re staging in the US do to tempt American followers to Melbourne?
Within the U.S., tennis is rising. We’ve acknowledged that, and we need to get these tennis gamers to return all the way down to the Australian Open. We’ve had launch occasions for the Australian Open at New York [the U.S. Open] and Indian Wells this 12 months. You’ve received the die-hard tennis viewers at them, after which probably individuals there that need to have an leisure expertise. That’s what we provide.
You’re additionally staging an occasion on the Laver Cup, run by Roger Federer.
We’re in partnership with Federer and Team8 to ship this occasion. It’s the Ryder Cup of tennis: Europe vs. the remainder of the world. Our group does the printed and on-court manufacturing, quite a lot of operational work in partnership with them, quite a bit within the media, [and] media gross sales.
We do some. However that is the start of our journey with that. We lean on our present companions. ESPN is an efficient instance. We need to be extra strategic and extra purposeful with how we strategy the promotion and storytelling … We’ve been very targeted on constructing a product and constructing the expertise. You’ll be able to’t inform a narrative until you might have one thing that individuals need to come [to].
Is there sufficient bandwidth for each open occasion to turn out to be a cultural bucket checklist occasion? Aren’t you competing with Wimbledon and the U.S. Open for that standing?
I feel there’s a restrict. [But], thirty years in the past, the Australian Open wasn’t on individuals’s minds. In truth at one level, there was a debate as as to if or not it must be a Grand Slam. It’s not solely [remained] a Grand Slam, however been made into far more.
