Australian Open tennis well placed to cash in on streaming services
The Australian Open could follow the path of the French Open in securing bigger revenue through online streaming.
It would be hard to argue that Ashleigh Barty’s breakthrough win in June’s French Open women’s final at Roland Garros was not the best thing to happen to Australian tennis for some time.
But recent events that have quietly unfolded in Paris may end up being more important from a financial point of view, and also soon herald a change in the way Australian sports are broadcast.
It comes at a time when traditional broadcasters, whether it is free-to-air or subscription television, are sending strong signals the days of paying huge rights increases for sports are probably over.
The solution for some sports appears to be global streaming companies like Amazon, Netflix, Facebook, Twitter or Google. That is the reason, for example, that AFL boss Gillon McLachlan reportedly met with at least three of those companies during a tour of the United States in April.
But given the uniqueness of what tennis can offer, it appears there is little doubt that it is the Australian sport that will appeal to the global online giants — with the French Open being the latest prime, so to speak, example of what could soon take place.
French tennis authorities last week struck a groundbreaking broadcast deal with Amazon for its Amazon Prime streaming service to have exclusive rights to show matches in the local French market of the new night-time sessions that will take place at a revamped Roland Garros — with an upgraded flagship Court Philippe-Chatrier and a new show court — from 2021 to 2023.
It would not be a shock if a deal with the same broadcaster happened at the same time for the Australian Open, with Tennis Australia having strategically lined up the biggest of its global rights to expire in less than 18 months, or after the 2021 Open.
North American rights are held by ESPN and Eurosport shows the Open across Europe. Both are lucrative markets and Tennis Australia will soon go to market with a sport that already is attractive to a deep-pocketed streamer like Amazon and incumbent so-called traditional broadcasters that will be extremely keen to maintain their rights. ESPN, for example, will be coming to the end of a marathon 10-year contract with Tennis Australia by then.
That sort of competitive tension is probably something most other Australian sports can only dream of. This market, after all, is relatively small for the global giants compared to a heavy populated North America and Europe. Would Amazon or Netflix really want to pay big dollars for a domestic-only competition like AFL or NRL? Time will tell.
Tennis could be different.
TA already has Amazon on board with its Laver Cup joint venture that it owns with Roger Federer, the US Tennis Association and Brazilian-Swiss billionaire Jorge Paulo Lehman.
Then there’s an intent to grow what the Australian Open is beyond tennis. Think of the food, music and travel aspects of attending the event at Melbourne Park, translated to broadcast. Tennis could have one broadcaster for the matches on court, another doing something akin to the popular behind the scenes Formula 1: Drive to Survive series now on Netflix, a cooking show and so on. It would all bring in more revenue.
Tennis-wise at least, the French Open deal, which will give the French Tennis Federation a 25 per cent uplift in broadcast revenue, was the latest move by Amazon into the live matches market around the world.
In June, it announced it had clinched a four-year rights agreement with the Women’s Tennis Association to add live and on-demand of at least 49 of that tour’s tournaments around the world to its Amazon Prime service in the United Kingdom and Ireland from 2020.
This week TA was celebrating its upcoming second year with local broadcaster Nine Network for the 2020 Australian Open, and an expanded January schedule to take in the new ATP Cup to be played across the country as a lead-in to the big Melbourne event.
Nine is paying $60 million annually for its domestic rights. But Tennis Australia is already getting more from international sources with 85 per cent of its viewers now overseas. The gap — and therefore importance — could soon be even greater.
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