MELBOURNE: Australian Open 2018 is set to be the most watched in the tournament’s history with expanded broadcast coverage and more digital engagement than ever before.
Ever increasing engagement on social media platforms and record figures on the Australian Open website – ausopen.com – have also contributed the event’s audience growth.
Australian Open tournament director Craig Tiley said he was pleased, yet not surprised, by the record ratings.
“The numbers speak for themselves, they show our ability to engage with fans whether it be via ever-growing social media channels, the website or through the tailored broadcast options we produce,” Tiley said.
“The Tennis Australia host broadcast, media rights, in-house production and digital teams continue to deliver world class tennis to the all corners of the world.
“As we enter the fourth year as host broadcaster we are working more closely than ever before with our global broadcast partners. In 2017 we produced more than 81,000 coverage hours, and this will increase again in 2018.
Digital initiatives for Australian Open 2018
ausopen.com relaunches in 2018 with a contemporary new design and smart innovative user-friendly features, available across desktop and mobile devices
The official AO app – downloaded on iPhone and Android devices more than one million times in 2017 – will bring people a truly personalised experience, allowing fans to follow players and segment news and results based on preferences in My AO
On Facebook the new AO Chatbot will provide more fan interaction than ever, serving up news, galleries and video on demand through artificial intelligence.
Australian Open 2018 host broadcast
Production of 842 matches live, including all main draw, juniors, legends and wheelchair matches plus countless practice sessions
Provide the most comprehensive broadcast coverage of any Grand Slam including up to 16 match courts during the tournament and 12 during qualifying.
AO 2017 TV ratings:
Aired live in 220 territories on more than 65 different TV channels, reaching more than 900 million homes
720,616,542 hours of coverage viewed worldwide
Reached 5 million viewers nationally on final day, taking the cumulative reach to 11.8 million.
Women’s final – Serena Williams v Venus Williams
Drew the biggest audience on ESPN since moving to 3:00 am ET start
Delivered a peak domestic TV audience of 42 million.
Men’s final – Roger Federer v Rafael Nadal
Eurosport dubbed the men’s final ‘the most-watched tennis match of all time’
Domestic audience of more than 5 million people, with a peak of 4.4 million.
Website
Australian Open website attracted more than 16.3 million unique visitors, a 16 per cent increase on AO 2016
IBM Slamtracker was launched more than 20 million times, up 47 percent on AO 2016.
Social media
Total social media audience of 4,019,332
#AusOpen was tweeted 33 million times
66 million unique views and 24.408 million snap views of the AO day one live Snapchat story
More than 588,900 views on Periscope
9,175,000 million + YouTube views during Australian Open 2017
28 million + views of Twitter videos
43 million + views of Facebook videos
More than 45 million views on SnappyTV
Brightcove’s cloud platform delivered up to 17 live streams at any one time during the Australian Open, with a combined audience views of over 11 million (live streams and VOD).
Related Report:
Australian Open 2018 prize money pool up 10% to $42.81m
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