July 3, 2025 • 41 mins
Daniel Ferretti has spent over 16 years at Tennis Australia, moving from the court to the commercial team.
In this episode, he shares how the Australian Open has evolved into one of the world’s biggest sporting events—and why its success is no accident.
From playing alongside a teenage Nick Kyrgios to running premium experiences for guests like Bill Gates, Daniel unpacks the business behind the spectacle: the logistics, the hospitality, the celebrity requests, and the innovation that keeps the AO growing year after year.
We talk player access, sponsorship strategy, global broadcasting, and what it’s like managing corporate expectations while staying connected to the game he loves. Plus, his scoreboard moment from the court that changed the way he approached sales forever.
🎾 1.2M attendees
🎾 $623M economic impact
🎾 2.3B social impressions
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
This episode is powered by Swiftx.
Hi, it's Chris Titley here. And on today's episode of School
Board the podcast, I'm joined byDaniel Ferretti, the sales
manager at Tennis Australia. Daniel, great to have you on the
show. Thanks for having me Chris.
Happy to be here. Daniel, we're sitting here on
Thursday the 3rd of July in the afternoon.
How's your day been mate? And also, how's your 2025 shaped
(00:23):
up so far? Yeah, it's been fantastic.
I mean, we kicked off the year with our biggest and best
Australian Open to date and it always makes my job easier as a
sales manager when things run smoothly in January and people
are very open to coming back. And this time of the year a lot
of people are heading overseas or on holidays through the
winter. So there's a bit of a slow
(00:45):
period, but we've had a big start to the year and we're
expecting a lot more uptake overspring.
Daniel, how do you, how do you plan your year round sort of
peak out traffic in in December,January perhaps and then a
little bit of a lull et cetera and then it picks up and then we
you all stations go. Yeah, it's a funny question.
I mean, I work my my whole rolesbased around the Australian
(01:05):
Open. So people often joke that I work
for one month a year. But you know, post Australian
Open, we have a pretty thorough debrief on, on everything that
we operate. We talk to all of our major
clients that that invest in the event.
So we spend a fair bit of time with each and every client to
get as much information as we can so that we can improve the
(01:27):
product that we bring to market.And then we have quite an in
depth and and long sales processmaking sure that that we have
spoken to everyone in market who's interested or who could be
interested in the event. But, but definitely this time of
the year, the middle of the yearis the slowest.
It gives you a chance to breathe.
Gives you a chance to breathe. Now, Daniel, you're involved in,
(01:48):
in tennis, You've been in TennisAustralia I think for 16 1/2
years or so. But where?
Where does the the love of tennis come from?
Yeah, I mean, tennis has been mywhole life.
When I was young, it was all I wanted to do with my life.
I, I tried to build a professional career which is
very difficult and very expensive.
So when I was 16 years old I, I started coaching at Tennis
(02:11):
Australia so that I could fund my travels so that I could get a
coach and I had a crack for a few years.
I had a world ranking in singlesand doubles.
I travelled around the world playing, quickly realised that
my best was not going to be at any level that was going to be
financially viable. So I I then started focusing
(02:31):
more on my coaching, went to uniand yet 16 years later I'm in a
in a corporate role at tennis. Australia, it's fantastic.
A couple of things on that. Surely there's a little bit of a
a childhood memories or or memories of knocking off a scalp
that ended up becoming a really good tennis player.
I had AI had a few losses that that ended up being pretty good.
(02:55):
I mean, one of the last professional tournaments I
played, I played a very young upand coming Nick Kyrios in the
second round of an internationaltournament in Bendigo.
And he had beat the number one seed Matt Reed, who's actually
working with Demon or he was only about 16 or 17.
And I had qualified one, my first round, which, which was an
(03:17):
ATP point at the time, meant a lot to me.
And I had this young 16 year oldNick Curio second round.
And I thought great, my, my drawers opened up here.
I could, I could make 1/4 and and I played well and, and he,
he beat me relatively convincingly.
And I thought, well, mate, if a 16 year old is, is making lot
(03:37):
work of me, maybe I'm, I'm not good enough to do what I thought
I could at tennis. But I think it was a year later
he made the quarter of Wimbledonand beat it wasn't actually an
easy draw. It wasn't the the benchmark that
you that you'd hoped. And then and then your role into
starting at Tennis Australia. We talked about you've been
there 16 years. What role did you start in IT
and what was the organisation like back then and the
(03:59):
Australian Open back then? Yeah, it was very different.
I I was a coach initially, so I started coaching pretty young,
at 16, and I can't even rememberhow I got the job.
I think my sister was working atthe desk here and they needed a
coach and she recommended me. Back then we didn't have the
national training centre that wehave now.
(04:21):
The offices of Tennis Australia were a bunker under Rod Lave
Arena. There was no natural light.
There would have been probably 200 full time staff.
So I coach, I still coach now just around my role but but
coaching was my main job I thinkfor about 5 or 6 years until I
finished my commerce degree at uni and then and then I worked
(04:45):
in finance at Tennis Australia for a few years whilst also
coaching. And then, yeah, eventually got
lucky with an opportunity in thecommercial team, which is
probably the most fun part of the business.
Yeah, no. And we're on scoreboard here,
which is telling stories from the game of sport, which
combines sport and business. How do you put the lens on
(05:05):
watching sport? But then you go, actually it's a
business and my job is to to be businessy, not overly sporty.
Yeah, well. What, what was interesting to me
was, I mean, I've got a sales job, but on paper I didn't
really have sales experience. And then I realised coaching is
actually is sales. I mean, you're, you're talking
(05:26):
to people one on one, you're engaging with them, you're
hopefully making them better. But on top of that, you're
building relationships and, and they have a vested interest in,
in staying with you long term. And for me personally, it was
about the scale of my impact. So I'm very passionate about the
sport and coaching. I still love but you know,
(05:48):
unless you're doing a squad withwith a few people on court,
you're, you're usually working with one person at a time.
I thought that having some involvement in the commercial
team provided an opportunity to build, I guess the value that
the the tournament can have and how that's reinvested back into
the sport. So we're very fortunate in
(06:08):
Australia that we have a Grand Slam.
It makes us a rich tennis nation.
And and now when you look at howwe compete on the world stage,
we, we punch above our weight. We have some of the best
facility setups in the world we've got, we've got a lot in
our favour that's funded off theback of the Australian Open.
So it it made sense for me to have a corporate career.
(06:29):
But it's still involved with sport and all the people that I
work with directly like the factthat I also have an attachment
to the sport rather than just a salesperson who's coming off the
street. Absolutely.
And you know, and you can maybe talk the technical side of
things as well if anyone wants to start being really technical
about the tennis court. Yeah, absolutely.
I mean most of my hosting sessions or catch ups with
(06:50):
clients, 45% or or 50% tennis. And you know, I do a lot with
the Davis Cup team. So that always comes into it.
And then there's just a little bit of business talk at the end.
But it is, it is fun to to see, you know, big businesses, banks,
law firms, the people who are using the package actually care
about tennis and that they want to talk tennis too.
(07:12):
Yeah, no, absolutely. Let's talk about the Australian
Open. The the one of the premier
events in Australian sporting calendar.
It's been there for for many, many years in in January just
seems to get keeping getting better and bigger and bigger and
better. Why?
What's the what's the the the formula to success?
Well, I think there's a few things that we have in our
favour that give us a competitive advantage.
(07:35):
One thing is our timing. Melbourne at that time of the
year really comes to life. We're far enough from Christmas
where people are back from theirholidays and are usually ready
to start the year off and and get back into work and we're not
yet into the school term. So we're we're in a pocket of
two weeks. That's really attractive,
(07:55):
especially for the corporate, corporate market that we work
with our precinct. I think where we are in
Melbourne is one of the best sports precincts in the world.
Melbourne's still a, a young city if you like, and it's
pretty well organised and we've built some of the best amenities
walking distance from the city. So the fact that you can, if
you're travelling, you can stay at some of the best hotels that
(08:16):
we have to offer and just walk to the tennis.
We, you can get a tram in. We have anything that you would
want to enjoy around Melbourne that's pretty close by.
I think that we're lucky from a tennis perspective, we're lucky
to have the first major event onthe calendar.
So you, you can see even in the media, there's talks of burnout
in the middle of the year and, and seasons being quite long and
(08:39):
they are very long, but players have usually had an off season.
They've had a chance to work on things, they've had a chance to
recover. And it really builds a lot of
motivation for them to start their year off well.
So you put a lot of those thingstogether and we're lucky that
we're in the position that we'rein.
We're in the city that we're in.We have our spot on the
calendar. And yeah, we've, we've got a lot
(09:02):
of floors space as well. We're twice as big as the French
Open. We're about 25% bigger in terms
of as footprint then Wimbledon. New York's a bit bigger than us,
but they're a long way out of the, the main city there.
So we've been able to grow and expand and really take over,
take over the city. I, I think people think January,
(09:26):
think Melbourne, they think the Australian Open.
It's I think it's the biggest event in the world in January in
terms of revenue, people and itsaccess.
Yeah. Can you give us some high level
numbers on ticket sales or people through the door or
people movement or the impact asyou mentioned in terms of
Melbourne and the economy? Yeah, definitely.
Well they just released the figures a few weeks ago.
(09:48):
So we had over 600 million, I think it was $623 million of
economic impact in, in terms of increased spending over that
period with the summer of tennisover the past ten years in
Victoria line it's 3.14 billion.So the government is obviously a
big supporter of this event, butit's a good investment for them
as well. We had 1.2 million people come
(10:12):
through the gate. So every year it's gotten bigger
and bigger. That includes Week 0, which
we're trying to build the qualifying week and do some
exhibition matches there. But even through the main draw,
we had over 1,000,000 people come come through the gate.
So it's the most attended tennisevent.
This year was the most attended tennis event in history.
So yeah, it's something that keeps growing bigger and bigger.
(10:33):
And that that in history also compares to the US Open,
Wimbledon and the French Open, right?
Yeah, yeah, definitely. So the, the US Open is the one
that comes closest. So every year they're breaking
their attendance records, but they're still just a bit behind
us. So we'll, we'll, I think we'll
keep on growing. We're only going to get bigger.
But but yeah, we're we're definitely competing with them
(10:56):
in terms of the people. And there's probably a lot of
moving parts in regards to the success of a tournament from the
popularity of the sport to the fan engagement, the fan
experience. Can you talk about those
different moving parts all through the calendar around I
suppose there's macro events etcetera as well and how you
manage all that and what you're focusing on to make it a, an
(11:16):
event that you know, people comeback for more and more and more.
Well, I think we've we've developed a personality more so
than the other Slams. So when you look at Paris,
London, New York, they're huge markets.
A lot of people, I think I mightbe wrong, but I think there's
100 million people that are within an hour flight of each of
(11:37):
those tournaments, while in Australia we've got about 10
million people. So the fact that we can compete
and stay relevant as a Grand Slam is a testament to the
amount of work that's gone behind the scenes in creating a
style. And we are the happy slam.
Craig, our CEO, will often say that every year we tear up 50%
of what we've built and we rebuild it different.
(11:57):
And people have come to expect that from the event.
So we've got all sorts of different celebrations.
We've got all abilities days, we've got First Nations days,
we've got Pride events, we've got a music festival now that
runs, you know, over 30,000 people just come for the music
every year. Our precinct is evolving.
This year we had Top Court, which was, you know, dedicated
at Gen Z and a younger demographic.
(12:21):
So we we, we're trying to make as much excitement and
entertainment around the event so that people can come and
enjoy the tennis. And sometimes they don't even
come for the tennis. They come for everything else
that we have to offer. But they also create this
incredible atmosphere around theevent.
And, you know, I was at Wimbledon last year and as a
tennis person, that was amazing to be at Wimbledon.
(12:43):
But I went with with my wife and, you know, after a day at
Wimbledon, she was kind of like,well, that's enough Wimbledon
for me. Well, at the AO, you know, she,
she can't get enough of it. So it's it really is attractive
to everyone from your tennis purist to just your your general
fan who wants to have fun. Yeah, I've been thinking about
the the person that goes there for a bit of both right and and
(13:03):
the the packages that are available for corporates or from
people that you can take. How many options are there, I
suppose for people to go as a day pass?
And then there's sponsors sponsorship and there's multi
sponsored, there's high end sponsorship.
There must be a fair plethora ofthat.
Yeah, definitely. Well, we're still at an
affordable event in, in terms ofI think it was half a million of
our tickets can be purchased forunder $60.00.
(13:24):
So ground pass is still the the main way that people will enjoy
the event. And then we have a a general
ticket in if you want to go to one of our stadiums courts and
they've all got roofs on them aswell.
So you're protected with the weather.
The area that I operate in is premium experience.
So that's the way way that you can really engage with the event
at a higher level. And we've got about 7 different
(13:46):
tiers, if you like, of offering.So from on court seats where you
know, the likes of Will Smith and Will Farrell this year we
had Jackie Chan sitting there for finals or Russell Crowe, you
know, that's a really exclusive 12 seats on the stadium.
We've got something like Riverside Social, which is, you
know, a consumer style product. You get full catering.
(14:09):
It's it's an amazing bar with great atmosphere, but it's more
accessible from a price point. And then we've got everything in
between. We've got fine fine dining,
we've got private rooms, we've got all sorts of experiences
that we bring to market. And, and in terms of like the,
the fine dining, the restaurantsand the experiences, how do you
test that? I suppose do you think, Oh well,
this could be good, this might not be good And the feedback
(14:30):
that you get year after year. Well, we've got a great team
here in our food and innovation team and our precinct team.
I mean they work year round. We've got our, our catering
partner, we had a new partner this year in Levy who, who are
part of the Compass Group who came in and they work year round
trying to get talent, trying to make sure that we can set up our
(14:51):
space as well. I mean, on, on the sales front,
I guess I'm talking to the clients and trying to, you know,
help the products move. So there's a lot that happens
behind the scenes in, in logistics and product delivery
and, and, you know, it's, it's quite, a, quite a feat to, to
come in over 2 weeks, build restaurants and, and staff them
and, and have them full, you know, it goes from zero people
(15:14):
to 100%, you know, over one day.And I, I think this year they
did an unbelievable job. But we're always spending time
post event to not just celebratethe wins, but to try and find
all the areas that we think are opportunities for us to continue
to develop. And it hasn't happened
overnight, you know, since I've been involved in this team for
(15:35):
about over 5 years, every year has gotten noticeably better
and, and the teams have gotten bigger and there's more talent
that we, we hire to make sure that things operate at the level
that, that our clients expect. I've got a couple of questions,
very curious questions about thethe Will Smiths of the world,
the people that come from overseas.
And I just give me the best or do the best as there are some
(15:57):
odd requests. And there's some things that
you've had to done to sort of, you know, vary the out of the
box, I suppose to keep these people happy that they just come
in. Yeah, we've had a, we've had a
lot of interesting people come over the years.
You know, we, we have also a team that's more dedicated to
some of the celebrity requests that come.
So sometimes they come and they're happy to, to allow us to
(16:21):
do some marketing around their involvement and, and they get
taken care of by a different team.
But sometimes they want to be more discreet.
You know, a few years ago we had, one of my clients was Bill
Gates and he came with his family and they had a lot of
unique bespoke security needs aswell.
But we, we did tennis clinics with him on court.
(16:43):
So I was coaching him and his family and we will organise in
all of their chauffeur servicing.
We're making sure that we had roots set up underground so that
they could move freely. And I mean, he, I think they
didn't realise that Australia isprobably quite a bit different
to the US in that sense. They had to geographic Yeah they
(17:04):
day trip to Perth not quite feasible.
Yeah, I mean, they they were, they had a whole team that were
10 steps ahead of him while, youknow, we were saying, you know,
maybe he could walk and not manypeople would notice him in the
flesh. But he had everything mapped out
and they had an amazing time. They're they're looking to come
back hopefully in the next couple of years because of the
(17:24):
experience that they had. But we've had a few clients who
have special needs that we try and work around.
And then you talk about the, thepremium experience and, and a
question to you is along the lines of you, if you go and
experience a premium experience and you're like, this is just
amazing. And you're having dinner and
maybe you're having a couple of nice wines and meeting some new
people and networking. And then you're like, oh, we got
to watch some tennis. How do you balance that?
(17:46):
People that go, Oh, this is a this is great.
Hi, I actually got to go and watch some tennis now.
Yeah, look, that's, that's one of the challenges that happens.
We try and schedule our timings around so that we get the
stadiums full for the matches. So, you know, dinner service
will run from 5:00 until 7:00 and then that'll finish just
(18:07):
before the night session kicks off.
The day session, there's always a little bit of interruption
because they play matches through the period that people
would eat lunch. You've seen at the French Open,
there was a there was a few negative articles around the
fact that the best seats in the stadium are empty while people
are enjoying the lunch. So we've tried to manage
scheduling so that there's less interruption in that sense.
(18:29):
But you notice tennis for the corporates, tennis ends up being
a hook to get someone in front of them.
That's really important for themto engage with.
And we have the flexibility and premium experience where it's
you want to have your lunch really quickly and get out in
the stadium or we'll service that.
You'll get in and out in 40 minutes.
And you know, you can watch as much tennis as you want.
Or if you are having a great time engaging with your client
(18:53):
and you you've got the tennis onon the TV's and you you're not
in a rush to get out there, thenthen that's an option forward it
to you as well. But yeah, it's, it's interesting
the fact that, you know, we've developed now on site some of
the best restaurants in the world.
And you can't believe that you're sitting 50 metres from
Broad Labour Arena getting readyto watch a tennis while you're
enjoying, you know, a fine dining course that you would
(19:15):
expect anywhere in in the best restaurants in the world.
When you get feedback from the corporates that maybe they do
sponsor and they they say, oh, maybe we should do it next year,
what's the feedback that you getthat they love the most?
Is it the food? Is it the atmosphere?
Is it the people that they're around?
Is it the tennis? Is it the players you know?
Yeah, I think it's all of those.So something that I've noticed
is sport is quite unique and post COVID people have been
(19:38):
really looking for better ways to engage with their clients and
build relationships. I think we'll, we'll witnessed
with a couple of tough years there that got lost a little and
and you know, people are desperate for, for better
engagement with their staff, forbetter engagement with their
clients. But sport is, it's pure emotion.
It's unscripted. You know, it's a it's a memory
that you'll hold with you for sometimes for the rest of your
(20:01):
life. Few a few years ago, I hosted
over the men's final when Rafa won, I think it's 2022.
He'd be Medvedev coming from 2 sets to love down to win him
five sets and finished just after midnight.
And I remember the, the guy thatI hosted, he, he brought his 18
year old son. He was enjoying one of his first
drinks at the restaurant before the match and.
(20:22):
I've bumped into him since then and and that's still the
favourite memory he's ever had with his son.
And the fact that they could watch history.
And that's what sport does you you get to see people at the top
of their game competing at the highest level.
You don't know how it's going toend up.
So it's always the tennis is thereal hero.
And when you're a corporate and you're inviting someone who's a
(20:44):
big client of yours is very important.
You've facilitated a memory thatwill hang on to them for a long
time and they'll always appreciate that invite.
But the fact that around that wecan build just the most
comfortable premium settings we can have, you know, the service
at the highest level, we can have the best quality food.
All of that helps just make the experience fantastic.
(21:06):
But generally it's, it's not a hard job because people love the
tennis and, and, you know, usually we're catching up with
them and they have small feedbacks on what they think
could be better. But they're they're ready to
sign on the dotted line to do itall again the next year.
Isn't that fantastic? Yeah, you've got the the in the
inexperience, which is your areaand the sales, etcetera.
But then you've also got the people at home and the people
(21:26):
around the world that are watching and you've got
innovations and you've got things like social media, we've
got clips and live scoring and all that sort of stuff.
I mean, this makes the the event, I suppose desirable to be
live. I've never been to the
Australian Open and would love to, to go at some point in time.
But you watch it and you go, this is, this is fabulous and
you can check all these different things.
How important and what sort of communication do you have with
(21:48):
other members around that to make sure that the IT is
seamless and it is watchable at home well?
We've got a huge team in the commercial department, includes
media rights, it includes broadcasting.
And you know, there's there's somany niches in there which I
don't have the expertise to knowabout.
But you know, we've become really a global event.
(22:08):
This year we had 2.3 billion social impressions through the
event. Now 8% of our fans that come
through the gate come from overseas.
Melbourne's an easy place to travel to.
It's far from the rest of the world, but obviously you can get
a plane into Melbourne Airport, you can get a half, half an hour
cab ride into the city and then you're staying in in the heart
(22:30):
of it. The media rights team has done a
really good job as well in supporting different regions
around the world. So we can now with the digital
innovations that are that are afforded to us, we can now sell
different rights across different parts of the world.
So something that's really interesting.
Again, it's not my area of expertise, but you could be
(22:52):
selling sponsorship with with oncourt signage, if you like, that
displays differently in different parts of the world.
So it's more efficient, so people can pay to sell to A to a
specific market rather than actually paint something on the
court that that shows the same everywhere in the world.
And that I think that's across the board in sport.
There's there's more creative ways now with digital and AI to,
(23:15):
to make it more efficient and make it more commercially
viable. But, but it's a big part of the
focus of the business is to makesure that that we are a global
event and that we attract as many visitors as as possible.
But also all of our digital setup is is catered for for all
the audiences that we could havearound the.
(23:36):
World and then you've also got the the players themselves that
have built their own personal brands and there's the desire to
see player X it live as well. And I suppose that wasn't around
when we were, I was growing up in terms of, you know, following
people's progress in other tournaments, etcetera.
You could sort of loosely hear it on Wide World of Sports.
But now you can get it instantlyand you can say oh jeez just
before before he retires. I'd love to watch Rafa play for
(23:59):
instance. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
I mean, we're, we're well and truly in the in the age of
social media as well. So the influence that sports
stars have on the world is huge.So you can build a real brand
around your yourself around yourgame.
And yeah, tennis players are creating big businesses around
just their image and their brand.
And you see, Federer now is, is one of the most sponsored
(24:24):
athletes in the world still. And he hasn't picked up a racket
in two years. But but yeah, you can definitely
stay a lot more connected now with social media to, to the
players that you you look up to.I mean, when you, I'm not that
old, but when I was young, you didn't have Instagram or
Facebook. So you were kind of hoping to
watch a tournament here or thereand maybe hear a media interview
(24:44):
of, of your favourite player at the end.
And it wasn't so connected. But now if you follow your
favourite athletes on Instagram,well, they're giving you live
updates every day. They're showing you parts of
their life. They're, they have a much
greater pool now than they've ever had.
And it's really interesting to see how it's all expanded.
And and then you're just on thattopic, the experience per SE of,
(25:05):
of a corporate or someone that actually wants to either meet
these people or or interact withthese people or have did is
where they speak, etcetera, someof these players.
How, how is that? How do you form that into the
packages? If, if you do it all?
And I suppose the the closest because we do feel closer to
athletes more than ever because of social media.
But then actually going, oh, I saw them speak or I got a selfie
(25:28):
with them or something like that.
Yeah, well, there's, there's a whole player services team
that's set up to protect the players as well.
You know, there's there's certain areas that we as a as a
premium experienced team would love to have full access and be
able to sell everything. And and you know, people pay a
lot of money to get very close to the players, but we also have
to protect, protect them and theteam do a really good job with
(25:51):
that. What we have at our disposal is
more the legends and past plays of the event.
So if you buy a big private roomor even a super box, anything
that's private, well, you can add to that experience the
trophies they could come to yoursuite and you can get the real,
you know, official AO trophies in your room, which is which is
(26:14):
an amazing experience. But also we have a legends
tournament that runs alongside in the second week.
We have past talent, mostly Australian, but from all over
the world, and you can you can add a past legend to come in to
to meet people around there. And and it's obviously it's very
relevant having it during the tournament.
But you might be getting ready to watch a a semi final and you
(26:37):
can have someone like Lady Hewell or Pat Rafter or anyone
like that come into the room andgive you really great insights
about the match that you're about to watch, which is the
best sort of entree to to the. What an experience that would be
like tennis on tennis is like this, you know, kid in a candy
store sort of thing. When it comes to, I suppose
(27:00):
sales and the the different types of experiences and
sponsorship. Do you look at the Wimbledons
and the US Opens and and the French Open?
Or do you also look outside of tennis and go to other events
and go, oh, that's very interesting.
Yeah. Look, we definitely look around
to every major event. I think that we're in a good
position now where people actually look at us.
A lot of the time. I feel like we're we're market
(27:23):
makers as well in the innovationspace.
Like I said before, many of the other slams have benefited from
the fact that they're major global events.
They have huge IP, but also there's just enormous amounts of
wealth around them and a lot of people.
So that can just drive a lot of demand while we've had to work
really hard on innovating. But definitely we look across
(27:45):
the board to see how other products are placed in market,
what they do. But I really think over the past
few years that a lot of the timepeople are looking at us.
I think that we have a team herethat that pushes the boundaries
and you know, that does a fantastic job.
When it comes to pricing, obviously the the cost of living
(28:06):
crisis, there's a, there's a point of watching live, live
sport, but there's also a premium level where sort of an
experience where, yeah, like theAFL grand final, you kind of
don't know whether it's $632.00 a ticket or $680 a ticket.
You just want to get to the AFL grand final.
How have you found matching supply and demand as you talked
about maybe more demand than actual supply?
(28:28):
Yeah. So we, it's, it's interesting
because my specific area we focus on, you know, 5% of the
total amount of tickets it sells.
So we we focus on the very best tickets in the main stadium.
And there's always a bit of contention about how expensive
it is to go to rob over arena, especially in the sessions that
(28:48):
that are high demand. But you only have a certain
amount of seats and you only have one final.
So you have to maximise the opportunity there.
I think the tournament's done a really good job in trying to
make it's benchmark accessible. So ground pass is a tremendous
value if you're a real tennis enthusiast.
Like when I was a kid growing up, we, we didn't have enough
money to go to Broadlave Arena and, and sit in the top row.
(29:10):
So I would back then, I would buy a five day ground pass and
just go and watch people practise, watch all the, you
know, lower, I guess seeds play on the outside courts.
I watch qualifying. So if you love your tennis, you
can get so much value, spend $50.00 or $60.00 on a ground
pass. You can have 12 or 14 hours of
(29:32):
tennis and it's probably the best price sports entertainment
event in that regard. But if you want to sit in the
first few rows of the main arenaand watch, you know, a high
demand match, then there's a real still a really strong
market for that. And, and we found in the, in the
corporate area, the corporate dollars influence that a lot for
(29:53):
them. It's, it's not about how
expensive it is to get involved,It's about the impact of not
being involved. And if you set up a routine with
your clients to entertain them at what is the best, I think
what is the best event that thatAustralia has to offer in sport
or one of them, they expect thatyear on year and and they might
be spending a huge amount of money with you.
(30:15):
And even if the ticket prices are expensive, you get that
value back by keeping that experience going.
Have you seen some corporates take up some some some packages,
etcetera and then move into becoming sponsors?
Yeah, yeah, definitely. We, we work a long time
alongside the sponsorship team. So there's it, it's a little bit
(30:37):
different obviously. So they're the the people that
buy the IP and we we have over 30 tournament sponsors now and
usually we'll have categories that are owned by a particular
sponsor. So they're exclusive in, in
different categories. Premium experience or
hospitality on site is a big part of sponsorship arrangements
as well. So sometimes you'll look at
(31:00):
companies that are investing heavily in corporate packaging
and then maybe that becomes an easier conversation to say,
well, do you want to go bigger here and turn it into a
sponsorship? Or we, we benefit a lot the
other way where there's a lot ofpotential sponsorship
conversations happening that don't come to fruition, but
maybe they want to have an involvement.
So yeah, we we work alongside that that team quite closely.
(31:23):
And, and Daniel, when it comes to the, the, the, the umpires
and the referees and the ball kids, etcetera, and, and all the
stuff that goes around, how big is the team as a whole for the
Australian Open in terms of Tennis Australia's dedication to
it? And, and, and also, yeah, the
various teams that you've talkedabout, the sponsorship team, the
catering team, there must be a lot of teams.
(31:44):
Oh, there's a huge amount of teams and and I think it's such
a fun event to work that What's amazing is you see the same
faces every year. You know, sometimes it's
teachers who are in their their holiday period or they take a
break from work, they take leaveand they work the AO year in
year out. I mean, you get the same drivers
year on year. It was that story a few years
(32:05):
ago where Rafa always had the same guy who'd be driving him
every year who he loved. I think it's around 12,000
staff. I could be wrong there, but I
think it's it's about 12,000 staff that work the two weeks of
the event. Around the year we have about
500 full time staff at TA that are dedicated to the sport, but
also a lot of them are dedicatedto summer series of tennis.
(32:29):
But obviously the amount of people that we use through the
event expands dramatically. And the participation levels at
grassroots for tennis, have you,do you monitor them as well?
There's a little bit of macro and there's other things like
paddle and pickle etcetera that sort of, you know, people are
starting to pick up on a little bit as well.
What's your sort of view around the macro underneath the surface
stuff? Well, we have huge teams
(32:51):
dedicated to participation. Obviously something that I'm
very passionate about. I still coach, I still get out
on court early every morning and, and try and have an impact
on the court. The way that we position
ourselves as, as the commercial team, if you like, is that we
create the opportunities. So obviously the amount of
funding that they have accessible to them is is off the
(33:13):
back of the commercial success of the event.
And then there's teams that are that are focused on pro tour
events, on professional support with upcoming players, on coach
support, on facilities in schools is a big part of our
participation programme, making sure that we get as many rackets
out there as possible. We've embraced different
(33:34):
versions of racket sports, if you like.
Obviously tennis is the biggest and most interested sport,
especially from a viewership perspective.
But if someone can get out thereon a pickleball court and you
know, it's a lot easier on the body and it's a lot easier if
you're not a seasoned player to get a good rally on a pickleball
court, well then we embrace that.
(33:56):
So there's a lot of different versions of tennis that are
coming out there like paddle as well.
So yeah, it's great to see. We we like to think that someone
has a racket in their hand and and that's all under the the
umbrella of of tennis. Yes.
And then they go, well, you knowI'm interested, therefore I
should go and watch and I shouldgo and view and consume
etcetera. And the cycle you know
perpetuates somewhat. Daniel, I want to talk to you
(34:20):
about some of your own life moments here in a second.
The first one is it's quite an interesting question I asked
these guests. Is that your favourite all time
sporting moment now? I'm going to guess it might be
tennis, but you let me know. Yeah, definitely tennis.
I mean, I grew up my parents, mydad was a soccer player and he
(34:42):
tried to get me to love soccer and I did a little bit, but I
definitely prefer tennis. I think my favourite memory is
Federer winning 2017 Australian Open after he beat Rafa in the
final. Murray and Novak with the two
that that everyone was expectingto get to the end of the
(35:03):
tournament and they both kind ofhad shock losses early and it
was the comeback story. Federer had a couple of amazing
wins on the way to the final andyou know, watching Federer and
Rafa in a in a period where people thought they were both
done and there was an epic 5 setmatch at Federer went on to win.
I remember staying up to watch, I didn't watch it live here, but
(35:23):
I watched it live on TV and thatwas that was quite a special
one. And then the other one that
comes to mind is Hewitt and Baghdad is finishing at 4:30 in
the morning. I can't remember the year now.
But I remember that, yeah, I reckon it would have been mid to
late thousands, no, like 8 or 9 maybe or even 6-7.
The court was the court was blue, so.
(35:46):
Probably around, yeah. I can't remember that, but I do
Marcos Baghdad. So remember that from the
Australian Open many, many yearsago.
There's been some characters along the way.
He was certainly one of them, but encapsulated the Australian,
the Australian audience. The other one is the scoreboard
moment, which is a moment in your life which is pretty vivid
to you. And you're like, oh, I remember
that. And from that moment, things
kind of changed. Yeah, that's a, that's an
(36:08):
interesting question. I mean, I touched on it very
briefly before. It wasn't that long ago but we
managed this Bill Gates booking in 2023.
He came and it was we didn't know who was coming and there
was quite a bit of, you know, organisation on the back end and
(36:29):
we knew there was security involvement.
And then we got to meet the people that were organising the
package and then we got to meet Bill and his family and took him
out on court. The first time I met him was to
have a tennis hit with him. And this is someone who's
obviously had a huge influence in the world.
And, you know, it's a pretty known person, very, very
(36:51):
intelligent. And the fact that I had his full
attention while I was coaching is quite daunting.
You know, you got someone like that that you're talking to that
you're trying to explain, you know, angles of the racket or
you're trying to explain footwork.
And I had his attention for a full hour and, and the session
finished and then his security edit security called me and said
(37:13):
they want to do that again tomorrow and the next day if
you're available. And it sort of showed me the
impact of tennis and sport and how lucky I am that I grew up
playing that. And the access to people and
talent that I've had off the back of the IP of the event and
my involvement with the sport has been huge.
But the fact that you, you know,you can be an expert in your
(37:33):
domain and you know, you can getattention of, of people.
And I think that was a big confidence boost for me, the
fact that I was sit with him foran hour and teach him something
or it felt like I would teach him something of value, Then
really sort of shifted the way that I approached the whole
sales cycle for the team. You know, we started really
preferencing in person. We started looking at maybe
(37:55):
seeing if we can get people out on court as a way of introducing
them to the Australian Open. And yeah, it's a big shift in
the way that we approached what we do here.
Yeah, it's fascinating in regards to someone that you
know, I suppose, who has got this incredible brain, but it
was like fixated on trying to improve their tennis game.
Yeah, it was all yeah, for that hour that we were out on court.
(38:18):
He was just he wanted to get as much information from me as as
humanly possible so that he could get 1% better.
And now Speaking of Speaking of sponsors, school boards picked
up a a great partner in Swiftx, a Brisbane based crypto
platform, and they've come on board to help us grow and tell
stories about the game of sport and also into into business.
(38:40):
The the the bucket list is a newquestion that I ask people,
which is powered by Swiftx. Is the an event that you'd love
to attend to that you haven't attended to yet in the sporting
realm? Well, that's a that's a good
question as well. There's so many events to pick
one. I mean, the World Cup comes to
mind, but if I had to pick one, it would be I've really gotten
(39:05):
into golf lately. Oh, OK, yeah, right.
Love playing golf, love watchinggolf.
It drives my wife insane. She doesn't get it.
But something like the President's Cup, you know, a big
event that gets all the best players together be going to to
watch a President's Cup would bepretty incredible.
And there's one coming to Australia pretty soon as well.
(39:28):
So I. Was going to say how'd you go in
the Masters watching that? What a finish.
What a putt to finish. Yeah, that was that was
incredible. Yeah.
I mean, every major sporting event is is unique And, and golf
seem and tennis seem to be the two sports they can Get Me Out
of bed to watch. But yeah, Masters.
(39:48):
I was going to say what what? What was he feeling after the
the 18th miss? What were you thinking?
Yeah, well, yeah. I mean, it was good to see Rory
win. He.
He deserved the masters. The 11th go.
Yep. Yep.
Yeah, it looked like it was going to.
It looked like he was going to choke.
(40:09):
Again, Oh yeah, I videotaped it on a on ATV that were watching
it on the 18th and my hands weresort of like shaking filming it.
And then when he missed, he'd like the hands they go, oh, no.
And like, I don't know whether to delete that or not because it
was like, oh, the heart sank. But then, you know, come, come
in the extra hole. We're like, Oh my goodness.
Wow. What a, you know from from that
moment, you know, 1212 minutes ago.
(40:32):
So now it's to do that part coolunder pressure.
Like, wow, that's taken a lot ofresilience.
Yeah, no, he deserved it is it was great to see.
Daniel, thank you so much for sharing your story about what
you do in tennis in Australia and how things have changed.
Your 16 and a bit years at at the Tennis Australia, your role
in, in creating the Australian Open to be one of the premier
(40:54):
sporting events in the world andwhat you do.
I I congratulate you and I wish you all the best for the coming
tournaments. It's getting, as I said earlier,
it's getting bigger and better. It's an iconic event in the
Australian calendar and looking forward to following the
progress and if there's anythingthat Scoreboard can do along the
way or very, very happy to help.Beautiful.
Well, thank you so much for having me.
(41:15):
It's been a lot of fun and hopefully we'll see you down.
In Melbourne, yes. Actually, no.
If you want to talk about the bucket list, it's up there for
sure. Thanks, Daniel.
Yeah. Definitely.
Thanks a lot, Chris.
This episode is powered by Swiftx.
Hi, it's Chris Titley here. And on today's episode of School
Board the podcast, I'm joined byDaniel Ferretti, the sales
manager at Tennis Australia. Daniel, great to have you on the
show. Thanks for having me Chris.
Happy to be here. Daniel, we're sitting here on
Thursday the 3rd of July in the afternoon.
How's your day been mate? And also, how's your 2025 shaped
(00:23):
up so far? Yeah, it's been fantastic.
I mean, we kicked off the year with our biggest and best
Australian Open to date and it always makes my job easier as a
sales manager when things run smoothly in January and people
are very open to coming back. And this time of the year a lot
of people are heading overseas or on holidays through the
winter. So there's a bit of a slow
(00:45):
period, but we've had a big start to the year and we're
expecting a lot more uptake overspring.
Daniel, how do you, how do you plan your year round sort of
peak out traffic in in December,January perhaps and then a
little bit of a lull et cetera and then it picks up and then we
you all stations go. Yeah, it's a funny question.
I mean, I work my my whole rolesbased around the Australian
(01:05):
Open. So people often joke that I work
for one month a year. But you know, post Australian
Open, we have a pretty thorough debrief on, on everything that
we operate. We talk to all of our major
clients that that invest in the event.
So we spend a fair bit of time with each and every client to
get as much information as we can so that we can improve the
(01:27):
product that we bring to market.And then we have quite an in
depth and and long sales processmaking sure that that we have
spoken to everyone in market who's interested or who could be
interested in the event. But, but definitely this time of
the year, the middle of the yearis the slowest.
It gives you a chance to breathe.
Gives you a chance to breathe. Now, Daniel, you're involved in,
(01:48):
in tennis, You've been in TennisAustralia I think for 16 1/2
years or so. But where?
Where does the the love of tennis come from?
Yeah, I mean, tennis has been mywhole life.
When I was young, it was all I wanted to do with my life.
I, I tried to build a professional career which is
very difficult and very expensive.
So when I was 16 years old I, I started coaching at Tennis
(02:11):
Australia so that I could fund my travels so that I could get a
coach and I had a crack for a few years.
I had a world ranking in singlesand doubles.
I travelled around the world playing, quickly realised that
my best was not going to be at any level that was going to be
financially viable. So I I then started focusing
(02:31):
more on my coaching, went to uniand yet 16 years later I'm in a
in a corporate role at tennis. Australia, it's fantastic.
A couple of things on that. Surely there's a little bit of a
a childhood memories or or memories of knocking off a scalp
that ended up becoming a really good tennis player.
I had AI had a few losses that that ended up being pretty good.
(02:55):
I mean, one of the last professional tournaments I
played, I played a very young upand coming Nick Kyrios in the
second round of an internationaltournament in Bendigo.
And he had beat the number one seed Matt Reed, who's actually
working with Demon or he was only about 16 or 17.
And I had qualified one, my first round, which, which was an
(03:17):
ATP point at the time, meant a lot to me.
And I had this young 16 year oldNick Curio second round.
And I thought great, my, my drawers opened up here.
I could, I could make 1/4 and and I played well and, and he,
he beat me relatively convincingly.
And I thought, well, mate, if a 16 year old is, is making lot
(03:37):
work of me, maybe I'm, I'm not good enough to do what I thought
I could at tennis. But I think it was a year later
he made the quarter of Wimbledonand beat it wasn't actually an
easy draw. It wasn't the the benchmark that
you that you'd hoped. And then and then your role into
starting at Tennis Australia. We talked about you've been
there 16 years. What role did you start in IT
and what was the organisation like back then and the
(03:59):
Australian Open back then? Yeah, it was very different.
I I was a coach initially, so I started coaching pretty young,
at 16, and I can't even rememberhow I got the job.
I think my sister was working atthe desk here and they needed a
coach and she recommended me. Back then we didn't have the
national training centre that wehave now.
(04:21):
The offices of Tennis Australia were a bunker under Rod Lave
Arena. There was no natural light.
There would have been probably 200 full time staff.
So I coach, I still coach now just around my role but but
coaching was my main job I thinkfor about 5 or 6 years until I
finished my commerce degree at uni and then and then I worked
(04:45):
in finance at Tennis Australia for a few years whilst also
coaching. And then, yeah, eventually got
lucky with an opportunity in thecommercial team, which is
probably the most fun part of the business.
Yeah, no. And we're on scoreboard here,
which is telling stories from the game of sport, which
combines sport and business. How do you put the lens on
(05:05):
watching sport? But then you go, actually it's a
business and my job is to to be businessy, not overly sporty.
Yeah, well. What, what was interesting to me
was, I mean, I've got a sales job, but on paper I didn't
really have sales experience. And then I realised coaching is
actually is sales. I mean, you're, you're talking
(05:26):
to people one on one, you're engaging with them, you're
hopefully making them better. But on top of that, you're
building relationships and, and they have a vested interest in,
in staying with you long term. And for me personally, it was
about the scale of my impact. So I'm very passionate about the
sport and coaching. I still love but you know,
(05:48):
unless you're doing a squad withwith a few people on court,
you're, you're usually working with one person at a time.
I thought that having some involvement in the commercial
team provided an opportunity to build, I guess the value that
the the tournament can have and how that's reinvested back into
the sport. So we're very fortunate in
(06:08):
Australia that we have a Grand Slam.
It makes us a rich tennis nation.
And and now when you look at howwe compete on the world stage,
we, we punch above our weight. We have some of the best
facility setups in the world we've got, we've got a lot in
our favour that's funded off theback of the Australian Open.
So it it made sense for me to have a corporate career.
(06:29):
But it's still involved with sport and all the people that I
work with directly like the factthat I also have an attachment
to the sport rather than just a salesperson who's coming off the
street. Absolutely.
And you know, and you can maybe talk the technical side of
things as well if anyone wants to start being really technical
about the tennis court. Yeah, absolutely.
I mean most of my hosting sessions or catch ups with
(06:50):
clients, 45% or or 50% tennis. And you know, I do a lot with
the Davis Cup team. So that always comes into it.
And then there's just a little bit of business talk at the end.
But it is, it is fun to to see, you know, big businesses, banks,
law firms, the people who are using the package actually care
about tennis and that they want to talk tennis too.
(07:12):
Yeah, no, absolutely. Let's talk about the Australian
Open. The the one of the premier
events in Australian sporting calendar.
It's been there for for many, many years in in January just
seems to get keeping getting better and bigger and bigger and
better. Why?
What's the what's the the the formula to success?
Well, I think there's a few things that we have in our
favour that give us a competitive advantage.
(07:35):
One thing is our timing. Melbourne at that time of the
year really comes to life. We're far enough from Christmas
where people are back from theirholidays and are usually ready
to start the year off and and get back into work and we're not
yet into the school term. So we're we're in a pocket of
two weeks. That's really attractive,
(07:55):
especially for the corporate, corporate market that we work
with our precinct. I think where we are in
Melbourne is one of the best sports precincts in the world.
Melbourne's still a, a young city if you like, and it's
pretty well organised and we've built some of the best amenities
walking distance from the city. So the fact that you can, if
you're travelling, you can stay at some of the best hotels that
(08:16):
we have to offer and just walk to the tennis.
We, you can get a tram in. We have anything that you would
want to enjoy around Melbourne that's pretty close by.
I think that we're lucky from a tennis perspective, we're lucky
to have the first major event onthe calendar.
So you, you can see even in the media, there's talks of burnout
in the middle of the year and, and seasons being quite long and
(08:39):
they are very long, but players have usually had an off season.
They've had a chance to work on things, they've had a chance to
recover. And it really builds a lot of
motivation for them to start their year off well.
So you put a lot of those thingstogether and we're lucky that
we're in the position that we'rein.
We're in the city that we're in.We have our spot on the
calendar. And yeah, we've, we've got a lot
(09:02):
of floors space as well. We're twice as big as the French
Open. We're about 25% bigger in terms
of as footprint then Wimbledon. New York's a bit bigger than us,
but they're a long way out of the, the main city there.
So we've been able to grow and expand and really take over,
take over the city. I, I think people think January,
(09:26):
think Melbourne, they think the Australian Open.
It's I think it's the biggest event in the world in January in
terms of revenue, people and itsaccess.
Yeah. Can you give us some high level
numbers on ticket sales or people through the door or
people movement or the impact asyou mentioned in terms of
Melbourne and the economy? Yeah, definitely.
Well they just released the figures a few weeks ago.
(09:48):
So we had over 600 million, I think it was $623 million of
economic impact in, in terms of increased spending over that
period with the summer of tennisover the past ten years in
Victoria line it's 3.14 billion.So the government is obviously a
big supporter of this event, butit's a good investment for them
as well. We had 1.2 million people come
(10:12):
through the gate. So every year it's gotten bigger
and bigger. That includes Week 0, which
we're trying to build the qualifying week and do some
exhibition matches there. But even through the main draw,
we had over 1,000,000 people come come through the gate.
So it's the most attended tennisevent.
This year was the most attended tennis event in history.
So yeah, it's something that keeps growing bigger and bigger.
(10:33):
And that that in history also compares to the US Open,
Wimbledon and the French Open, right?
Yeah, yeah, definitely. So the, the US Open is the one
that comes closest. So every year they're breaking
their attendance records, but they're still just a bit behind
us. So we'll, we'll, I think we'll
keep on growing. We're only going to get bigger.
But but yeah, we're we're definitely competing with them
(10:56):
in terms of the people. And there's probably a lot of
moving parts in regards to the success of a tournament from the
popularity of the sport to the fan engagement, the fan
experience. Can you talk about those
different moving parts all through the calendar around I
suppose there's macro events etcetera as well and how you
manage all that and what you're focusing on to make it a, an
(11:16):
event that you know, people comeback for more and more and more.
Well, I think we've we've developed a personality more so
than the other Slams. So when you look at Paris,
London, New York, they're huge markets.
A lot of people, I think I mightbe wrong, but I think there's
100 million people that are within an hour flight of each of
(11:37):
those tournaments, while in Australia we've got about 10
million people. So the fact that we can compete
and stay relevant as a Grand Slam is a testament to the
amount of work that's gone behind the scenes in creating a
style. And we are the happy slam.
Craig, our CEO, will often say that every year we tear up 50%
of what we've built and we rebuild it different.
(11:57):
And people have come to expect that from the event.
So we've got all sorts of different celebrations.
We've got all abilities days, we've got First Nations days,
we've got Pride events, we've got a music festival now that
runs, you know, over 30,000 people just come for the music
every year. Our precinct is evolving.
This year we had Top Court, which was, you know, dedicated
at Gen Z and a younger demographic.
(12:21):
So we we, we're trying to make as much excitement and
entertainment around the event so that people can come and
enjoy the tennis. And sometimes they don't even
come for the tennis. They come for everything else
that we have to offer. But they also create this
incredible atmosphere around theevent.
And, you know, I was at Wimbledon last year and as a
tennis person, that was amazing to be at Wimbledon.
(12:43):
But I went with with my wife and, you know, after a day at
Wimbledon, she was kind of like,well, that's enough Wimbledon
for me. Well, at the AO, you know, she,
she can't get enough of it. So it's it really is attractive
to everyone from your tennis purist to just your your general
fan who wants to have fun. Yeah, I've been thinking about
the the person that goes there for a bit of both right and and
(13:03):
the the packages that are available for corporates or from
people that you can take. How many options are there, I
suppose for people to go as a day pass?
And then there's sponsors sponsorship and there's multi
sponsored, there's high end sponsorship.
There must be a fair plethora ofthat.
Yeah, definitely. Well, we're still at an
affordable event in, in terms ofI think it was half a million of
our tickets can be purchased forunder $60.00.
(13:24):
So ground pass is still the the main way that people will enjoy
the event. And then we have a a general
ticket in if you want to go to one of our stadiums courts and
they've all got roofs on them aswell.
So you're protected with the weather.
The area that I operate in is premium experience.
So that's the way way that you can really engage with the event
at a higher level. And we've got about 7 different
(13:46):
tiers, if you like, of offering.So from on court seats where you
know, the likes of Will Smith and Will Farrell this year we
had Jackie Chan sitting there for finals or Russell Crowe, you
know, that's a really exclusive 12 seats on the stadium.
We've got something like Riverside Social, which is, you
know, a consumer style product. You get full catering.
(14:09):
It's it's an amazing bar with great atmosphere, but it's more
accessible from a price point. And then we've got everything in
between. We've got fine fine dining,
we've got private rooms, we've got all sorts of experiences
that we bring to market. And, and in terms of like the,
the fine dining, the restaurantsand the experiences, how do you
test that? I suppose do you think, Oh well,
this could be good, this might not be good And the feedback
(14:30):
that you get year after year. Well, we've got a great team
here in our food and innovation team and our precinct team.
I mean they work year round. We've got our, our catering
partner, we had a new partner this year in Levy who, who are
part of the Compass Group who came in and they work year round
trying to get talent, trying to make sure that we can set up our
(14:51):
space as well. I mean, on, on the sales front,
I guess I'm talking to the clients and trying to, you know,
help the products move. So there's a lot that happens
behind the scenes in, in logistics and product delivery
and, and, you know, it's, it's quite, a, quite a feat to, to
come in over 2 weeks, build restaurants and, and staff them
and, and have them full, you know, it goes from zero people
(15:14):
to 100%, you know, over one day.And I, I think this year they
did an unbelievable job. But we're always spending time
post event to not just celebratethe wins, but to try and find
all the areas that we think are opportunities for us to continue
to develop. And it hasn't happened
overnight, you know, since I've been involved in this team for
(15:35):
about over 5 years, every year has gotten noticeably better
and, and the teams have gotten bigger and there's more talent
that we, we hire to make sure that things operate at the level
that, that our clients expect. I've got a couple of questions,
very curious questions about thethe Will Smiths of the world,
the people that come from overseas.
And I just give me the best or do the best as there are some
(15:57):
odd requests. And there's some things that
you've had to done to sort of, you know, vary the out of the
box, I suppose to keep these people happy that they just come
in. Yeah, we've had a, we've had a
lot of interesting people come over the years.
You know, we, we have also a team that's more dedicated to
some of the celebrity requests that come.
So sometimes they come and they're happy to, to allow us to
(16:21):
do some marketing around their involvement and, and they get
taken care of by a different team.
But sometimes they want to be more discreet.
You know, a few years ago we had, one of my clients was Bill
Gates and he came with his family and they had a lot of
unique bespoke security needs aswell.
But we, we did tennis clinics with him on court.
(16:43):
So I was coaching him and his family and we will organise in
all of their chauffeur servicing.
We're making sure that we had roots set up underground so that
they could move freely. And I mean, he, I think they
didn't realise that Australia isprobably quite a bit different
to the US in that sense. They had to geographic Yeah they
(17:04):
day trip to Perth not quite feasible.
Yeah, I mean, they they were, they had a whole team that were
10 steps ahead of him while, youknow, we were saying, you know,
maybe he could walk and not manypeople would notice him in the
flesh. But he had everything mapped out
and they had an amazing time. They're they're looking to come
back hopefully in the next couple of years because of the
(17:24):
experience that they had. But we've had a few clients who
have special needs that we try and work around.
And then you talk about the, thepremium experience and, and a
question to you is along the lines of you, if you go and
experience a premium experience and you're like, this is just
amazing. And you're having dinner and
maybe you're having a couple of nice wines and meeting some new
people and networking. And then you're like, oh, we got
to watch some tennis. How do you balance that?
(17:46):
People that go, Oh, this is a this is great.
Hi, I actually got to go and watch some tennis now.
Yeah, look, that's, that's one of the challenges that happens.
We try and schedule our timings around so that we get the
stadiums full for the matches. So, you know, dinner service
will run from 5:00 until 7:00 and then that'll finish just
(18:07):
before the night session kicks off.
The day session, there's always a little bit of interruption
because they play matches through the period that people
would eat lunch. You've seen at the French Open,
there was a there was a few negative articles around the
fact that the best seats in the stadium are empty while people
are enjoying the lunch. So we've tried to manage
scheduling so that there's less interruption in that sense.
(18:29):
But you notice tennis for the corporates, tennis ends up being
a hook to get someone in front of them.
That's really important for themto engage with.
And we have the flexibility and premium experience where it's
you want to have your lunch really quickly and get out in
the stadium or we'll service that.
You'll get in and out in 40 minutes.
And you know, you can watch as much tennis as you want.
Or if you are having a great time engaging with your client
(18:53):
and you you've got the tennis onon the TV's and you you're not
in a rush to get out there, thenthen that's an option forward it
to you as well. But yeah, it's, it's interesting
the fact that, you know, we've developed now on site some of
the best restaurants in the world.
And you can't believe that you're sitting 50 metres from
Broad Labour Arena getting readyto watch a tennis while you're
enjoying, you know, a fine dining course that you would
(19:15):
expect anywhere in in the best restaurants in the world.
When you get feedback from the corporates that maybe they do
sponsor and they they say, oh, maybe we should do it next year,
what's the feedback that you getthat they love the most?
Is it the food? Is it the atmosphere?
Is it the people that they're around?
Is it the tennis? Is it the players you know?
Yeah, I think it's all of those.So something that I've noticed
is sport is quite unique and post COVID people have been
(19:38):
really looking for better ways to engage with their clients and
build relationships. I think we'll, we'll witnessed
with a couple of tough years there that got lost a little and
and you know, people are desperate for, for better
engagement with their staff, forbetter engagement with their
clients. But sport is, it's pure emotion.
It's unscripted. You know, it's a it's a memory
that you'll hold with you for sometimes for the rest of your
(20:01):
life. Few a few years ago, I hosted
over the men's final when Rafa won, I think it's 2022.
He'd be Medvedev coming from 2 sets to love down to win him
five sets and finished just after midnight.
And I remember the, the guy thatI hosted, he, he brought his 18
year old son. He was enjoying one of his first
drinks at the restaurant before the match and.
(20:22):
I've bumped into him since then and and that's still the
favourite memory he's ever had with his son.
And the fact that they could watch history.
And that's what sport does you you get to see people at the top
of their game competing at the highest level.
You don't know how it's going toend up.
So it's always the tennis is thereal hero.
And when you're a corporate and you're inviting someone who's a
(20:44):
big client of yours is very important.
You've facilitated a memory thatwill hang on to them for a long
time and they'll always appreciate that invite.
But the fact that around that wecan build just the most
comfortable premium settings we can have, you know, the service
at the highest level, we can have the best quality food.
All of that helps just make the experience fantastic.
(21:06):
But generally it's, it's not a hard job because people love the
tennis and, and, you know, usually we're catching up with
them and they have small feedbacks on what they think
could be better. But they're they're ready to
sign on the dotted line to do itall again the next year.
Isn't that fantastic? Yeah, you've got the the in the
inexperience, which is your areaand the sales, etcetera.
But then you've also got the people at home and the people
(21:26):
around the world that are watching and you've got
innovations and you've got things like social media, we've
got clips and live scoring and all that sort of stuff.
I mean, this makes the the event, I suppose desirable to be
live. I've never been to the
Australian Open and would love to, to go at some point in time.
But you watch it and you go, this is, this is fabulous and
you can check all these different things.
How important and what sort of communication do you have with
(21:48):
other members around that to make sure that the IT is
seamless and it is watchable at home well?
We've got a huge team in the commercial department, includes
media rights, it includes broadcasting.
And you know, there's there's somany niches in there which I
don't have the expertise to knowabout.
But you know, we've become really a global event.
(22:08):
This year we had 2.3 billion social impressions through the
event. Now 8% of our fans that come
through the gate come from overseas.
Melbourne's an easy place to travel to.
It's far from the rest of the world, but obviously you can get
a plane into Melbourne Airport, you can get a half, half an hour
cab ride into the city and then you're staying in in the heart
(22:30):
of it. The media rights team has done a
really good job as well in supporting different regions
around the world. So we can now with the digital
innovations that are that are afforded to us, we can now sell
different rights across different parts of the world.
So something that's really interesting.
Again, it's not my area of expertise, but you could be
(22:52):
selling sponsorship with with oncourt signage, if you like, that
displays differently in different parts of the world.
So it's more efficient, so people can pay to sell to A to a
specific market rather than actually paint something on the
court that that shows the same everywhere in the world.
And that I think that's across the board in sport.
There's there's more creative ways now with digital and AI to,
(23:15):
to make it more efficient and make it more commercially
viable. But, but it's a big part of the
focus of the business is to makesure that that we are a global
event and that we attract as many visitors as as possible.
But also all of our digital setup is is catered for for all
the audiences that we could havearound the.
(23:36):
World and then you've also got the the players themselves that
have built their own personal brands and there's the desire to
see player X it live as well. And I suppose that wasn't around
when we were, I was growing up in terms of, you know, following
people's progress in other tournaments, etcetera.
You could sort of loosely hear it on Wide World of Sports.
But now you can get it instantlyand you can say oh jeez just
before before he retires. I'd love to watch Rafa play for
(23:59):
instance. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
I mean, we're, we're well and truly in the in the age of
social media as well. So the influence that sports
stars have on the world is huge.So you can build a real brand
around your yourself around yourgame.
And yeah, tennis players are creating big businesses around
just their image and their brand.
And you see, Federer now is, is one of the most sponsored
(24:24):
athletes in the world still. And he hasn't picked up a racket
in two years. But but yeah, you can definitely
stay a lot more connected now with social media to, to the
players that you you look up to.I mean, when you, I'm not that
old, but when I was young, you didn't have Instagram or
Facebook. So you were kind of hoping to
watch a tournament here or thereand maybe hear a media interview
(24:44):
of, of your favourite player at the end.
And it wasn't so connected. But now if you follow your
favourite athletes on Instagram,well, they're giving you live
updates every day. They're showing you parts of
their life. They're, they have a much
greater pool now than they've ever had.
And it's really interesting to see how it's all expanded.
And and then you're just on thattopic, the experience per SE of,
(25:05):
of a corporate or someone that actually wants to either meet
these people or or interact withthese people or have did is
where they speak, etcetera, someof these players.
How, how is that? How do you form that into the
packages? If, if you do it all?
And I suppose the the closest because we do feel closer to
athletes more than ever because of social media.
But then actually going, oh, I saw them speak or I got a selfie
(25:28):
with them or something like that.
Yeah, well, there's, there's a whole player services team
that's set up to protect the players as well.
You know, there's there's certain areas that we as a as a
premium experienced team would love to have full access and be
able to sell everything. And and you know, people pay a
lot of money to get very close to the players, but we also have
to protect, protect them and theteam do a really good job with
(25:51):
that. What we have at our disposal is
more the legends and past plays of the event.
So if you buy a big private roomor even a super box, anything
that's private, well, you can add to that experience the
trophies they could come to yoursuite and you can get the real,
you know, official AO trophies in your room, which is which is
(26:14):
an amazing experience. But also we have a legends
tournament that runs alongside in the second week.
We have past talent, mostly Australian, but from all over
the world, and you can you can add a past legend to come in to
to meet people around there. And and it's obviously it's very
relevant having it during the tournament.
But you might be getting ready to watch a a semi final and you
(26:37):
can have someone like Lady Hewell or Pat Rafter or anyone
like that come into the room andgive you really great insights
about the match that you're about to watch, which is the
best sort of entree to to the. What an experience that would be
like tennis on tennis is like this, you know, kid in a candy
store sort of thing. When it comes to, I suppose
(27:00):
sales and the the different types of experiences and
sponsorship. Do you look at the Wimbledons
and the US Opens and and the French Open?
Or do you also look outside of tennis and go to other events
and go, oh, that's very interesting.
Yeah. Look, we definitely look around
to every major event. I think that we're in a good
position now where people actually look at us.
A lot of the time. I feel like we're we're market
(27:23):
makers as well in the innovationspace.
Like I said before, many of the other slams have benefited from
the fact that they're major global events.
They have huge IP, but also there's just enormous amounts of
wealth around them and a lot of people.
So that can just drive a lot of demand while we've had to work
really hard on innovating. But definitely we look across
(27:45):
the board to see how other products are placed in market,
what they do. But I really think over the past
few years that a lot of the timepeople are looking at us.
I think that we have a team herethat that pushes the boundaries
and you know, that does a fantastic job.
When it comes to pricing, obviously the the cost of living
(28:06):
crisis, there's a, there's a point of watching live, live
sport, but there's also a premium level where sort of an
experience where, yeah, like theAFL grand final, you kind of
don't know whether it's $632.00 a ticket or $680 a ticket.
You just want to get to the AFL grand final.
How have you found matching supply and demand as you talked
about maybe more demand than actual supply?
(28:28):
Yeah. So we, it's, it's interesting
because my specific area we focus on, you know, 5% of the
total amount of tickets it sells.
So we we focus on the very best tickets in the main stadium.
And there's always a bit of contention about how expensive
it is to go to rob over arena, especially in the sessions that
(28:48):
that are high demand. But you only have a certain
amount of seats and you only have one final.
So you have to maximise the opportunity there.
I think the tournament's done a really good job in trying to
make it's benchmark accessible. So ground pass is a tremendous
value if you're a real tennis enthusiast.
Like when I was a kid growing up, we, we didn't have enough
money to go to Broadlave Arena and, and sit in the top row.
(29:10):
So I would back then, I would buy a five day ground pass and
just go and watch people practise, watch all the, you
know, lower, I guess seeds play on the outside courts.
I watch qualifying. So if you love your tennis, you
can get so much value, spend $50.00 or $60.00 on a ground
pass. You can have 12 or 14 hours of
(29:32):
tennis and it's probably the best price sports entertainment
event in that regard. But if you want to sit in the
first few rows of the main arenaand watch, you know, a high
demand match, then there's a real still a really strong
market for that. And, and we found in the, in the
corporate area, the corporate dollars influence that a lot for
(29:53):
them. It's, it's not about how
expensive it is to get involved,It's about the impact of not
being involved. And if you set up a routine with
your clients to entertain them at what is the best, I think
what is the best event that thatAustralia has to offer in sport
or one of them, they expect thatyear on year and and they might
be spending a huge amount of money with you.
(30:15):
And even if the ticket prices are expensive, you get that
value back by keeping that experience going.
Have you seen some corporates take up some some some packages,
etcetera and then move into becoming sponsors?
Yeah, yeah, definitely. We, we work a long time
alongside the sponsorship team. So there's it, it's a little bit
(30:37):
different obviously. So they're the the people that
buy the IP and we we have over 30 tournament sponsors now and
usually we'll have categories that are owned by a particular
sponsor. So they're exclusive in, in
different categories. Premium experience or
hospitality on site is a big part of sponsorship arrangements
as well. So sometimes you'll look at
(31:00):
companies that are investing heavily in corporate packaging
and then maybe that becomes an easier conversation to say,
well, do you want to go bigger here and turn it into a
sponsorship? Or we, we benefit a lot the
other way where there's a lot ofpotential sponsorship
conversations happening that don't come to fruition, but
maybe they want to have an involvement.
So yeah, we we work alongside that that team quite closely.
(31:23):
And, and Daniel, when it comes to the, the, the, the umpires
and the referees and the ball kids, etcetera, and, and all the
stuff that goes around, how big is the team as a whole for the
Australian Open in terms of Tennis Australia's dedication to
it? And, and, and also, yeah, the
various teams that you've talkedabout, the sponsorship team, the
catering team, there must be a lot of teams.
(31:44):
Oh, there's a huge amount of teams and and I think it's such
a fun event to work that What's amazing is you see the same
faces every year. You know, sometimes it's
teachers who are in their their holiday period or they take a
break from work, they take leaveand they work the AO year in
year out. I mean, you get the same drivers
year on year. It was that story a few years
(32:05):
ago where Rafa always had the same guy who'd be driving him
every year who he loved. I think it's around 12,000
staff. I could be wrong there, but I
think it's it's about 12,000 staff that work the two weeks of
the event. Around the year we have about
500 full time staff at TA that are dedicated to the sport, but
also a lot of them are dedicatedto summer series of tennis.
(32:29):
But obviously the amount of people that we use through the
event expands dramatically. And the participation levels at
grassroots for tennis, have you,do you monitor them as well?
There's a little bit of macro and there's other things like
paddle and pickle etcetera that sort of, you know, people are
starting to pick up on a little bit as well.
What's your sort of view around the macro underneath the surface
stuff? Well, we have huge teams
(32:51):
dedicated to participation. Obviously something that I'm
very passionate about. I still coach, I still get out
on court early every morning and, and try and have an impact
on the court. The way that we position
ourselves as, as the commercial team, if you like, is that we
create the opportunities. So obviously the amount of
funding that they have accessible to them is is off the
(33:13):
back of the commercial success of the event.
And then there's teams that are that are focused on pro tour
events, on professional support with upcoming players, on coach
support, on facilities in schools is a big part of our
participation programme, making sure that we get as many rackets
out there as possible. We've embraced different
(33:34):
versions of racket sports, if you like.
Obviously tennis is the biggest and most interested sport,
especially from a viewership perspective.
But if someone can get out thereon a pickleball court and you
know, it's a lot easier on the body and it's a lot easier if
you're not a seasoned player to get a good rally on a pickleball
court, well then we embrace that.
(33:56):
So there's a lot of different versions of tennis that are
coming out there like paddle as well.
So yeah, it's great to see. We we like to think that someone
has a racket in their hand and and that's all under the the
umbrella of of tennis. Yes.
And then they go, well, you knowI'm interested, therefore I
should go and watch and I shouldgo and view and consume
etcetera. And the cycle you know
perpetuates somewhat. Daniel, I want to talk to you
(34:20):
about some of your own life moments here in a second.
The first one is it's quite an interesting question I asked
these guests. Is that your favourite all time
sporting moment now? I'm going to guess it might be
tennis, but you let me know. Yeah, definitely tennis.
I mean, I grew up my parents, mydad was a soccer player and he
(34:42):
tried to get me to love soccer and I did a little bit, but I
definitely prefer tennis. I think my favourite memory is
Federer winning 2017 Australian Open after he beat Rafa in the
final. Murray and Novak with the two
that that everyone was expectingto get to the end of the
(35:03):
tournament and they both kind ofhad shock losses early and it
was the comeback story. Federer had a couple of amazing
wins on the way to the final andyou know, watching Federer and
Rafa in a in a period where people thought they were both
done and there was an epic 5 setmatch at Federer went on to win.
I remember staying up to watch, I didn't watch it live here, but
(35:23):
I watched it live on TV and thatwas that was quite a special
one. And then the other one that
comes to mind is Hewitt and Baghdad is finishing at 4:30 in
the morning. I can't remember the year now.
But I remember that, yeah, I reckon it would have been mid to
late thousands, no, like 8 or 9 maybe or even 6-7.
The court was the court was blue, so.
(35:46):
Probably around, yeah. I can't remember that, but I do
Marcos Baghdad. So remember that from the
Australian Open many, many yearsago.
There's been some characters along the way.
He was certainly one of them, but encapsulated the Australian,
the Australian audience. The other one is the scoreboard
moment, which is a moment in your life which is pretty vivid
to you. And you're like, oh, I remember
that. And from that moment, things
kind of changed. Yeah, that's a, that's an
(36:08):
interesting question. I mean, I touched on it very
briefly before. It wasn't that long ago but we
managed this Bill Gates booking in 2023.
He came and it was we didn't know who was coming and there
was quite a bit of, you know, organisation on the back end and
(36:29):
we knew there was security involvement.
And then we got to meet the people that were organising the
package and then we got to meet Bill and his family and took him
out on court. The first time I met him was to
have a tennis hit with him. And this is someone who's
obviously had a huge influence in the world.
And, you know, it's a pretty known person, very, very
(36:51):
intelligent. And the fact that I had his full
attention while I was coaching is quite daunting.
You know, you got someone like that that you're talking to that
you're trying to explain, you know, angles of the racket or
you're trying to explain footwork.
And I had his attention for a full hour and, and the session
finished and then his security edit security called me and said
(37:13):
they want to do that again tomorrow and the next day if
you're available. And it sort of showed me the
impact of tennis and sport and how lucky I am that I grew up
playing that. And the access to people and
talent that I've had off the back of the IP of the event and
my involvement with the sport has been huge.
But the fact that you, you know,you can be an expert in your
(37:33):
domain and you know, you can getattention of, of people.
And I think that was a big confidence boost for me, the
fact that I was sit with him foran hour and teach him something
or it felt like I would teach him something of value, Then
really sort of shifted the way that I approached the whole
sales cycle for the team. You know, we started really
preferencing in person. We started looking at maybe
(37:55):
seeing if we can get people out on court as a way of introducing
them to the Australian Open. And yeah, it's a big shift in
the way that we approached what we do here.
Yeah, it's fascinating in regards to someone that you
know, I suppose, who has got this incredible brain, but it
was like fixated on trying to improve their tennis game.
Yeah, it was all yeah, for that hour that we were out on court.
(38:18):
He was just he wanted to get as much information from me as as
humanly possible so that he could get 1% better.
And now Speaking of Speaking of sponsors, school boards picked
up a a great partner in Swiftx, a Brisbane based crypto
platform, and they've come on board to help us grow and tell
stories about the game of sport and also into into business.
(38:40):
The the the bucket list is a newquestion that I ask people,
which is powered by Swiftx. Is the an event that you'd love
to attend to that you haven't attended to yet in the sporting
realm? Well, that's a that's a good
question as well. There's so many events to pick
one. I mean, the World Cup comes to
mind, but if I had to pick one, it would be I've really gotten
(39:05):
into golf lately. Oh, OK, yeah, right.
Love playing golf, love watchinggolf.
It drives my wife insane. She doesn't get it.
But something like the President's Cup, you know, a big
event that gets all the best players together be going to to
watch a President's Cup would bepretty incredible.
And there's one coming to Australia pretty soon as well.
(39:28):
So I. Was going to say how'd you go in
the Masters watching that? What a finish.
What a putt to finish. Yeah, that was that was
incredible. Yeah.
I mean, every major sporting event is is unique And, and golf
seem and tennis seem to be the two sports they can Get Me Out
of bed to watch. But yeah, Masters.
(39:48):
I was going to say what what? What was he feeling after the
the 18th miss? What were you thinking?
Yeah, well, yeah. I mean, it was good to see Rory
win. He.
He deserved the masters. The 11th go.
Yep. Yep.
Yeah, it looked like it was going to.
It looked like he was going to choke.
(40:09):
Again, Oh yeah, I videotaped it on a on ATV that were watching
it on the 18th and my hands weresort of like shaking filming it.
And then when he missed, he'd like the hands they go, oh, no.
And like, I don't know whether to delete that or not because it
was like, oh, the heart sank. But then, you know, come, come
in the extra hole. We're like, Oh my goodness.
Wow. What a, you know from from that
moment, you know, 1212 minutes ago.
(40:32):
So now it's to do that part coolunder pressure.
Like, wow, that's taken a lot ofresilience.
Yeah, no, he deserved it is it was great to see.
Daniel, thank you so much for sharing your story about what
you do in tennis in Australia and how things have changed.
Your 16 and a bit years at at the Tennis Australia, your role
in, in creating the Australian Open to be one of the premier
(40:54):
sporting events in the world andwhat you do.
I I congratulate you and I wish you all the best for the coming
tournaments. It's getting, as I said earlier,
it's getting bigger and better. It's an iconic event in the
Australian calendar and looking forward to following the
progress and if there's anythingthat Scoreboard can do along the
way or very, very happy to help.Beautiful.
Well, thank you so much for having me.
(41:15):
It's been a lot of fun and hopefully we'll see you down.
In Melbourne, yes. Actually, no.
If you want to talk about the bucket list, it's up there for
sure. Thanks, Daniel.
Yeah. Definitely.
Thanks a lot, Chris.
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