Sports rights-holders have proven increasingly adept at attracting tastemakers and trendsetters to the viewing gallery. That gravitational pull has proven instrumental in bringing broadcaster money and commercial sponsorship cash to tournaments and competitions, with their increasingly rare access to mass, highly engaged and often affluent audiences taking on an outsized importance for consumer brands.
Over the last decade, Australian Open CEO Craig Tiley has worked hard to take the first tennis grand slam event of the year from another stop on the tennis circuit to a “bucket list event,” by taking control of both media production and the cultural circus that surrounds the sport. The Australian Open is now the best-attended of tennis’s major events and produces other tournaments, such as the Laver Cup. And in support of its ongoing task to tempt more American sports fans to hop over the Pacific and attend in person, the Open’s begun staging wild card games and fan events across the U.S.
Speaking to Digiday in San Francisco, where the Laver Cup is being staged this year, Tiley explained how the Open has carved out a cultural niche.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Sports events like Formula One, soccer and tennis are now also major cultural moments. How has the Open managed to harness that?
We festivalized the sport.
We made a conscious decision to expand [the Australian Open] far beyond a tennis event — make it about an experience, make it about entertainment.
In our first year, we had over 80 bands over the course of two weeks. It’s now extended to a three-week event. We added food: the gastronomic experience in Melbourne is pretty awesome, probably among the best in the world. This year, we’re adding a beauty and wellness pillar. We dabbled a little bit in the past with Mecca Cosmetica, Australia’s largest beauty brand, and we’ll be really ramping that up this year.
One of the challenges that I do put on the team is that the event has to be 50% different from year to year. If you come in 2025 … at a minimum, your experience is going to be completely different in 2026. If you enjoy music, if you enjoy food, if you’d like to visit Australia, then we’ve got something for you. It’s the largest event in Australia, [and ] it’s the l