Nine, Stan bundle Wimbledon, French Open tennis broadcast rights

Nine and its streaming service Stan have bought broadcast rights for two of tennis’ grand slam tournaments.

Novak Djokovic of Serbia celebrates winning the men's singles final against Roger Federer of Switzerland at Wimbledon in 2019. Picture: Getty Images

Nine and its subscription streaming service Stan have bought the international broadcast for two grand slam tennis tournaments, Wimbledon and the French Open, for an undisclosed sum.

The announcement of the three-year deals comes just days after Nine announced that sport would feature on Stan for the first time from next year after securing a broadcast deal with Rugby Australia worth $100m over three years.

Nine chief executive Hugh Marks said on Thursday that the tennis broadcast rights gives the media group the “flexibility to develop the right mix of games” that will appear on its free-to-air television network, plus all the matches on Stan Sport for a monthly subscription fee.

Nine on Monday announced it would launch Stan Sport, which will be offered as a bundle to Stan’s customers.

The move into sport comes as Stan faces increasing competition from Netflix, Foxtel, Binge and Hayu and gets set to lose the bulk of its key Showtime television programs from January.

Stan, which had 2.2m active subscribers in August, is set to lose a vast slate of Showtime shows such as Californication, Happyish, Nurse Jackie and Dexter. However, its current Showtime deal means it will continue to get new episodes of existing shows on its platform, such as Billions, for the entire run of the show.

Wimbledon matches have been broadcast on Nine’s rival network Seven and pay-television platform Foxtel for the past decade, while the French Open from Roland-Garros has been broadcast on multicultural public broadcaster SBS and Foxtel.

Foxtel has been the home of rugby for the past 25 years, with free-to-air TV broadcaster Network Ten also showing Bledisloe matches and some Rugby World Cup games.