The
Champion's
Set
Your biggest audience opportunity hasn't found you yet.
The people most likely to drive your next decade of growth probably aren't following you right now. The AO stopped trying to convert non-tennis fans into tennis fans and started asking different questions: what else do they love? Where are they already showing up? How can we credibly meet them there? The areas where we were underperforming were blank spaces to play.
Don't chase sponsors, look for co-authors.
Most sponsorship is physically visible, but emotionally invisible: A logo on a fence, a lock-up on a press release. Partnerships that move the needle start with a different question: where do our worlds genuinely overlap? At the AO, we bring a simple construct to every partner — bring your audience, your culture, your creative capability, and we'll bring ours. Then together we create what neither of us could make alone.
Take control of how your story is told.
How much did your brand spend last year on media, creators, broadcasters, partners and platforms? And how much of that was spent letting other people tell your story in your name? After the AO had become a world-class content engine, we found that the brand felt slightly different depending on where you encountered it. So we made three moves:
Build an enduring platform that doesn't change every year. Translate it into an identity people want to carry. Make it effortless for every partner, broadcaster, and creator to tell the story too.
Global scale starts with local truths.
The AO is watched by 2 billion people across 225 markets. But most global fans never set foot in Melbourne Park. We needed to build one globally recognisable brand while showing up in ways that resonate locally. Our strategy: If you can't get to the AO, we'll bring the AO to you. Through live sites, localised content, influencer programmes and grassroots investment in the next generation of the sport, we told one brand story in hundreds of markets across the globe.
Live your values and they will come.
Most marketers can recite their brand values from memory. The harder question is how to truly live them. At the AO, the value we live most loudly is right there in the name: Open. Open to everyone, from All Abilities programming to First Nations recognition to LGBTQIA+ initiatives that are part of the fabric of the tournament. Because somewhere in your category, there is an audience that would choose you if they felt genuinely seen by you. The brands that win the next generation will be the ones those audiences look at and think: they're for people like me.
Don't wait for disruption, drive it.
Ambition is great in theory. The hard part is when the budget is tight and the timelines are impossible, and the easy option seems, well, easier. When something is working, the temptation is to repeat it, improve it, and call it innovation. Our outgoing CEO Craig Tiley had a standing challenge: every AO should feel at least 50% different from the year before. That challenge forces ambition – giving us the 1 Point Slam, TOPCOURT, the Animated Feed, Grand Slam Oval and more.
