🎾 Inside the Australian Open
Welcome to the Alts Sunday Edition 👋
Well, the Australian Open is in full swing here in Melbourne!
The AO is one of the most watched sporting events on the planet, but it didn’t start that way. A few decades ago, it was an afterthought.
Today, I’ll explore how the Australian Open went from Grand Slam underdog to the most modern, forward-thinking tennis tournament on the planet. (Hint: There is an extremely well-run organization behind it.)
I spent some time backstage with Machar Reid, the 18-year veteran Director of Innovation at Tennis Australia, the governing body which manages & operates the Australian Open each year.
Machar took me behind the scenes to understand how AO invests, operates, and why it feels so different from every other Grand Slam.
Let’s go 👇
Tennis’s Grand Slam underdog
For those who don’t follow tennis, the sport essentially revolves around four big events each year, known as Grand Slams.
You’ve heard the names:
🇺🇸 The US Open, played in New York each summer on a hard court
🇫🇷 The French Open, played in Paris on a red clay court
🇬🇧 Wimbledon, the oldest Grand Slam, played near London on a grass court
The Australian Open, however is the newest kid on the block. It was officially designated as a major in 1923 — decades after tennis had already taken root in Europe and the US.
Like so much else down under, the Australian Open was hindered by its geographic isolation. It was the outlier of the tennis world. The 4th Grand Slam. The “afterthought” for tennis fans, due to the extreme commitment required to attend. (Reaching Australia used to take 40 days by ship!)
Unlike the big metro hubs of the northern hemisphere, AO couldn’t assume attendance or take it for granted. It had to earn it.
“Even today, the population surrounding us is far less than New York, London or Paris. So we’re reliant on repeats far more than those other events. If you’re going to continue to attract repeat customers, you have to provide them a reason to come each year, right?” – Machar Reid
Fast-forward to 2026, and the Australian Open is a three-week long juggernaut that sold 1.2 million tickets last year (23% of the entire city population) and earned a reported AUD $693m.
But this reliance for repeat business means the event has to try harder than its peers. This is a metaphor for Melbourne in general. It’s part of the city’s post-industrial efforts to reinvent itself as a center of arts, entertainment, and global sports.
Ask someone what they think of Sydney, and they’ll list usual sexy global icons. The Opera House. The Sydney Harbor bridge. Bondi Beach. Etc.
Melbourne doesn’t have the same cultural cachet. It’s a world-class city for sure; consistently ranked among the top 3 most livable cities. World’s largest tram network, insanely good food, and the coffee culture is on point. I love it here.
But its international “brand” is not as well-defined. It’s subtler.
The Australian Open is changing that. AO has become synonymous with Melbourne, and vice-versa. It’s now become a huge part of the city’s identity, and as we’ll get to later, this was no accident either.
But solving for repeat attendance at this scale doesn’t just mean running a better tournament. It forces you to play the long game and build a machine.
The AO Machine
A Disneyland-like experience
What makes AO different is how it has been deliberately designed not merely as a sports competition, but as an entire experience.
Walking through Melbourne Park feels like Disneyland. The grounds are enormous, and spaces are meticulously designed into “worlds.”
Water slides, go-karts, and obstacle courses for young kids and families. Video games, DJs and bands for teenagers. Fine dining, and nightlife for adults. And dozens of terrific food options for everyone. It’s a machine designed to delight people of all ages (and earn gobs of money).
“We’re thinking about how to create lifelong affinity for a fan. How they transition through the different worlds as they get older. We’re trying to cater for all of these different audience segments within the same precinct”. – Machar Reid
The Precinct model
AO is able to pull off this experience partially because its grounds are significantly larger than the other Slam sites:
All this extra space lets the Australian Open program the grounds with far more ambition. And this aligns with a very important sports investing trend: the precinct model.
Rather than treating a stadium as a venue that turns on and off, precincts are real-estate-heavy ecosystems designed to capture attention and time before, during, and after the event itself.
A canonical example in the US is what the Atlanta Braves built with The Battery Atlanta — a mixed-use development surrounding the ballpark that blends retail, dining, offices, hotels, and entertainment. It has transformed game days into full-day (and year-round) experiences.
However, AO’s situation is a bit unique, because Tennis Australia doesn’t actually own the grounds. (Which is a shame, because it’s a stone’s throw from downtown, and is some of the most valuable real estate in the southern hemisphere!)
Instead, the land is owned by the Melbourne and Olympic Park Trust, where Tennis Australia operates as a year-round tenant. During the tournament, they take full operational control.
It’s technically an operational lease, even if it feels like they own the space.
Accessibility and the “All-Day Experience”
The challenge isn’t just attracting people once — AO is already the hottest game in town. It’s growing without turning the event into something only a narrow audience can afford.
Prices to watch the marquee matches can be extremely expensive. Arena tickets range from the low hundreds in early rounds, to thousands of dollars for Round 3 and above.
If your most visible product steadily prices out the majority of fans, the loyalty you’re trying to build will start to erode
AO has solved this with something called the Ground Pass — a AUD $59 pass that makes the event accessible to those who may not want to pay for or can’t afford reserved stadium seating.
Fans can watch the action from a dozen courts without needing a special ticket, or just soak up the atmosphere from one of the popup bars or outdoor shaded lounges. You can spend an entire day on site without watching a single arena match, and still feel like you’ve fully participated.
I have to be honest: When I first moved to Melbourne six years ago, I didn’t quite understand the value of the Ground Pass. I recall thinking, “wait, so we’re just gonna watch the finals on a big screen? We can do that at home!”
But once I stepped onto the grounds, I immediately got it. It’s a vibe. Now I go every single year.
Innovation is baked in
A final thing you notice about AO is how much it changes each time you go.
The first year I went I was blown away by an upscale popup restaurant which was built solely for the event and completely dismantled a month later. This year they have a big video game pavilion, a three-story Mecca Cosmetics building, and even waterslides.
This change is all by design:
“We change 50% of what we do each year. Our mandate is to ensure fans are delighted to return, because they know it’s not going to be the same experience they had the year before.”
– Machar Reid
Again, this isn’t New York, Paris, or London. AO has to try harder, and innovation is core to the machine.
The Animated Broadcast Feed
AO places tons of new bets, gives them a few years to find traction, and scales those that land.
One great example of this is the Animated Broadcast Feed. First trialed several years ago, it had a rocky start before finding success.
Year 1: A single court on YouTube showing only a ball moving across a screen. (Lame)
Year 2: Introduced player tracking, initially just as a “centroid” (a single dot, getting better).
Year 3: Full skeletal data (tracking 30 points on a skeleton) allowing for the recreation of digital avatars.
This feature has come a long way! What started out as dots on a screen now looks like a modern version of Wii Sports. Today, major networks use this feed as a legitimate broadcast product.
The One-Point Slam
But sometimes an idea immediately becomes a winner — like this year’s brilliant One-Point Slam.
The One-Point Slam is a knockout tournament where each “match” is decided by a single point. No sets. No games. One rally determines who advances and who’s done.
But here’s the kicker: it drops everyday players into the same arena as the pros!
The results were incredible. Attendance was huge, fans loved it, and players were talking about it afterward; sharing clips, and treating it like a real competition rather than some lame gimmick.
Best of all, an amateur player won!
One thing almost every pro sports organization on the planet wants to do is figure out how to connect grassroots to pro. It’s a tricky needle to thread, but AO’s One-Point Slam pulled it off in a way that’s authentic and replicable.
Just watch: The other Grand Slams are certainly going to borrow the idea. (They’d be dumb not to.)
Taking control of broadcasting
In most major sporting events, the broadcast is effectively outsourced. Networks show up, point their cameras, and decide what viewers see. The event supplies access, networks own the authorship.
But years ago, AO flipped that model upside-down.
Rather than handing authorship to outside broadcasters, Tennis Australia brought the entire host broadcast in-house. That means AO controls every single camera, the entire production workflow, and the master feed itself.
The move was inspired by the Olympics. Decades ago, realized that local broadcasters, like those in the US, were naturally biased toward their own athletes. This makes some sense, but also muddies the full story.
Broadcasters like ESPN layer on their own commentary and decide which matches to air — something that has drawn huge criticism his year! (See: Australian Open Fans Struggle With ESPN’s Tiered Streaming.) But the underlying product, the “pure” footage of every court, originates with the AO.
Today, the scale is massive. On Rod Laver Arena alone, there are 38 cameras operated and controlled by AO staff. This ensures that, no matter where in the world you’re watching, Tennis Australia has control over the visual story, the narrative, and ultimately the AO brand.
This has obvious short-term benefits. If the AO wants to test a new player-tracking system or a virtual overlay, they don’t have to ask a network for permission.
Per Machar:
“We’re doing an important proof of concept this week with a French group. And we’re able to do it, because, essentially we’re directing our own internal teams, as compared to going to ESPN and asking for permission. Testing a new feature would, understandably, not be a priority for them!”
But he notes there’s a long-term revenue component to this as well:
“Standing up an entire team also allows us to monetize our content more effectively. Because we can show the Melbourne sign on the court, we’re able to essentially guarantee a certain amount of exposure, versus someone else controlling the cameras and cutting away. That matters in the short-term and long-term.”
This capability to “operate” innovation rather than just “stage” it has set a new standard in the industry. In fact, the US Open has followed suit by taking more of its production in-house. (And the NBA has been making noise about this as well.)
AO Ventures: Investing in tennis
The final piece of the Australian Open machine is its institutional commitment to the future.
AO Ventures is a dedicated AUD $40m+ venture capital arm designed to ensure the tournament doesn’t just watch the future happen, but owns a piece of it.
Investment thesis
The fund primarily invests in Seed & Series A startups at the intersection of sports and technology. Companies don’t necessarily need to be in the tennis industry — although that certainly doesn’t hurt! But they do need to be sports-related.
Ideally, AO ventures looks for areas where they themselves can either be a customer, a proving ground, or both. If a technology can’t improve the fan experience, the broadcast, or the game itself, it likely doesn’t fit the portfolio.
Mahar and I discussed due diligence, and I was interested to learn that they mirror our approach when it comes to DD:
“We always look for technologies that have an application in our business. And we’re in a really fortunate position where we’ve got a bunch of product subject matter experts across our business that can certainly assist with due diligence.”
The current portfolio reflects this real-world focus, with companies like:
Bolt 6, who makes tracking technology that competes with Hawk-Eye
Raven Controls, which does event incident management
SwingVision, an AI platform that democratizes professional-level stats
AO Startups: The testing ground
While AO Ventures handles the capital, AO Startups sits upstream as a high-velocity pilot program.
Instead of just relying on pitch decks, AO brings companies in to run live pilots during the tournament. Through this structure, AO gets the option to invest, essentially using the event as a live-action due diligence lab.
After 4 years there are about 40 startups involved, and many of these pilots turn into commercial relationships — even if AO Ventures doesn’t end up investing:.
“About 70% of the AO Startups portfolio have gone on to land commercial deals with the business. The pilot in itself is an opportunity for us to perform diligence.”
Funding tennis-adjacent sports
Wyatt and I are known for pointing out how comically un-investable pickleball is. But AO sees things a bit differently.
In a world where many incumbents want to defend their home court, AO wants to expand it. Padel and pickleball aren’t viewed as competitive threats; they’re viewed as additive to the greater tennis ecosystem.
There’s a pickleball court at the AO this year, with a line to get in. Last year they debuted the AO Pickleball Slam, complete with a $100,000 prize pool.
The logic is simple: Anything that puts a racket in someone’s hand strengthens the entire ecosystem. They believe the rising tide of these “tennis-adjacent” sports will lift all boats.
In fact, just a few days ago, AO Ventures announced their first ever padel investment in Padel Haus, a fast-growing operator building luxury padel clubs around the world.
This investment perfectly illustrates the kind of companies AO Ventures is looking for — fast-growing businesses that sit adjacent to tennis and can easily weave themselves into the Open. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a Padel Haus popup at AO next year.
As with everything AO does, the goal is to reinforce the Australian Open as the most innovative Grand Slam, and compound AO’s brand gravity, cultural status, and loyalty, year after year. 🎾
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That’s all for today!
Big thanks to Machar Reid for giving me the inside scoop & access. This is the busiest week of the year for Tennis Australia, and he had far better things to do than hang out with me!
Also thanks to Ridley Plummer who introduced us.
Find me in the Alts community,
Stefan
Disclosures
This issue was written and edited by Stefan von Imhof
This issue was sponsored by Goodfin. It contains no affiliate links.
Alt Assets, Inc has no holdings in any companies mentioned in this issue
As always, Stefan is long tennis and short pickleball