I was in Melbourne over the weekend for the final stages of the Australian Open. The first Grand Slam of the tennis season. It’s become acknowledged as one of the best fan experiences in world sport – and particularly admired in the sports industry for the way partners are integrated into that experience.
It’s been called Disneyland for sports, the Happy Slam, but you might well call it the Brand Slam too.
Over the course of three weeks of activity on its Melbourne Park site this year, the organisers welcomed 1.35 million paying visitors. For context, Wimbledon gets just over 500,000. The US Open got 1.1 million last year; an NBA team will do around 800,000 a year if it sells out every game.
We are living in an era of the ‘festivalisation’ of sport and the organisers of the Australian Open are masters of the art. The tennis and the athletes that play it are just two stars in a glittering constellation of attractions now packed into a three-week period across January. ‘Opening week’ has been beefed out this year; an opening ceremony featuring former stars like Roger Federer and a wildly successful new competition – the million-dollar One Point Slam – have contributed to well over 200,000 coming through the gates at the Australian Open before a Grand Slam ball has been hit in anger.
This is a jewel in the crown of Australia’s sporting scene; a hugely important annual moment for Melbourne; and a popular launchpad for the international tennis season.
But what is the secret sauce? I went behind the scenes to work out the recipe for myself.
Ingredients:
- Melbourne
- Good weather – enough to cover the majority of the dish
- Innovation – enough so it accounts for half the dish
- Restrictions – plenty
- S’s - 4 (Seats, shade, screens, space)
- Happy players – 100s
- Broadcast control – enough to cover the entire dish, as well as 220 territories globally
- Restaurants – 40
- Musical acts – 80
- Personas – 8
- An agency approach – again, enough to cover the entire dish
- Garnish – Peach Melbourne and a frappe
Method:
Step 1 – Prepare your fundamentals
Head chef Craig Tiley would no doubt recommend laying out your fundamental ingredients before you get cracking. Melbourne and good weather are what you have to work with. January is mid-summer. The sun is shining. The air is fragrant with the citrus smell of eucalyptus blossom. Melbourne is compact and very well connected. The Melbourne Park site where the AO takes place is a 15-minute walk from the CBD and connected with dozens of trams, trains and buses. The airport is close by and connected to every major city in the country and across the world. Melbourne is an events heartland. The 5.4 million people who call this city home are prepared to come out for events on any night of the week, partly because of how accessible everything is. Even so; make sure your relationship with the city authorities is so tight that transport is free and always on for your ticket holders – no matter what time your event ends on any given night. Pop all that into a big wok.
Step 2 – Open a drink and pour in some restrictions
At this stage it’s worth making sure you’ve got a crisp glass of something on the go while you cook (perhaps an ice cold Guojiao 1573 baijiu), because you’re about to pour a good glug of restrictions into your wok, which can be daunting. Make sure the restrictions you’re using are manifold, covering everything from Australia’s delicate position on the global tennis calendar, the fact that Melbourne isn’t the easiest place to get to from Europe or America, to the fact that every piece of infrastructure at your host venue is temporary, save for the major arenas themselves. Give these all a good stir and make sure everyone can see them; you don’t want the dish tasting of complacency.
Step 3 – Balance the restrictions with innovation
On their own, restrictions are sharp and tangy. When mixed judiciously with innovation, they combine gently and transform into something unique, powerful and pleasing. It’s an alchemy that Tiley and his team have mastered. Innovation is an ingredient that’s bandied around in the sports industry, but few understand the best method for unlocking the true potential of its flavour. Tiley’s method: incentivise it. He wants his team to make sure the AO – the dish – is 50% new every year. He wants his team to try new things. Innovation is not a department, it’s a culture. Executives are incentivised to try new things. No permanent infrastructure? No problem: it’s an opportunity to try something new every year; pivoting to meet sponsor and spectator feedback and flexing to fit where the latest opportunity is.
Step 4 – Bulk out your dish
Head Chef Tiley uses the ‘four S’s’ as his principal ingredients: seats, space, screens and shade. With these core ingredients, there is no such thing as too much. And while there are only 60,000 seats with a courtside view of the tennis, there is plenty of space around the grounds to accommodate up to 100,000 guests a day.
Step 5 – Make sure your players are happy
The AO is known as the Happy Slam – putting smiles on faces is key. Joy spreads outward from the courts. At this stage, you want to warm up your players and make sure they’re ready and raring to go. Make them comfortable, give them things to do, make it fun; and above all give them plenty of space: four storeys of private player lounge within Rod Laver Arena should do it - with plenty of restaurant options – and a network of tunnels under the venues to make sure they can get in and out of the site without being hassled if necessary.
Step 6 – Pop the whole thing in a state-of-the-art broadcast ‘oven’
Control over every aspect of the cooking process is critical. If the tournament is a dish, then 99% of the people who consume it each year do it via TV and digital pictures. The Australian Open has run its own host broadcast operation for the last ten years. Tiley and his most trusted sou chef, Chief Content Officer Darren Pearce, control exactly how the tournament shows up on all and any media platforms around the world. They’ve had a specialised ‘BTS’ unit for the last handful of years; with cameras and content teams in warm-up spaces to show the comprehensive extent of players’ matchday routines. The player walkout this year was redesigned by artist and stage designer Es Devlin, with a striking tunnel of LED screens set up to guide the players out onto court on Rod Laver Arena. The blue Melbourne sea twinkles on the screens until the final few yards transform into the ‘walk of champions’, placing the competitors dynamically and dramatically into their own potential place in history. Whisk this into the dish delicately, using your most nimble pastry chef. Too much and it will spoil, leaving the players disgruntled and the dish sour. Full control also allows a creative approach to camera and studio placements, as well as vision mixing. Shots of happy, smiley people around the precinct are par for the course, and sponsors can be guaranteed screentime. Digital overlay means regional sponsorship rights are in play too. This year, there were three beer sponsors: the Peroni Nastro Azzuro group with rights onsite; Tsingtao in China; and Stella Artois in South America.
Step 7 – Festivalise your dish
Transforming a sports event into a festival means broadening out the flavour profile so sport isn’t the dominant taste. Food, drink, entertainment and overall vibes need to come through just as powerfully. Variety is the spice of life here. The Australian Open has 40 different restaurant outlets and 80 different musical acts popping up here there and everywhere across three weeks, including, unusually, the media centre, where daily five o’clock cocktail hour on the terrace is accompanied by live music. Civilised.
Step 8 – Understand who you’re cooking for and cater appropriately
The AO has eight working audience personas. Each one of them is catered for with food, drink, retail and entertainment offerings. Combined with a test and learn approach and feedback loops that allow for iteration on the fly, the experience across the precinct evolves even over the course of a three-week tournament. Taste and adjust seasoning. Again and again.
Step 9 – Weigh, measure, adapt and iterate the dish
Tennis Australia takes an in-house approach to organising the AO. It has three times as many staff working full time than any of the other Grand Slams. Its outlay on talent might be high, but its reliance on agencies is minimal, its control is total, and its ability to act fast and nimbly is paramount. Led by Chief Commercial Officer Cedric Cornelis and Global Partnerships Director Roddy Campbell, the partnerships team operate a tight process during the event; taking the time to meet and understand changing client needs; building pitch decks and proposals to turn round immediately and strike while the iron’s hot. The areas for growing value are clear and various: Building out a true third week of activity has provided more inventory; multiple deals in single categories are now possible through a regional approach with digital signage; international activation; and the ability to service activation briefs – making use of the comprehensive broadcast and media set-up at their disposal. Taste and adjust seasoning. Again and again.
Step 10: Serve hot with a welcome cocktail (the signature Grey Goose Lemon Ace is very refreshing), Piper Heidsieck champagne, or gallons of beer.
