Australian Open director Craig Tiley has defended the health of the tournament after the Victorian government spent tens of millions of dollars supporting Tennis Australia during the Covid pandemic.
The 2024 event is targeting a record 1 million visitors and has started on a Sunday for the first time, extending the duration of the so-called “Happy Slam” by a day.
“This is Victoria’s event, this is the taxpayers of Victoria, their event,” Tiley said in launching the tournament at Melbourne Park. But as speculation swirls about the future of the tennis calendar, Tiley denied that the Australian grand slam would have been insolvent without taxpayer support.
“There were options for us from a financial point of view,” Tiley said. “In the last year, we’ve done an incredible amount of work ensuring that we had sufficient funds to launch 2024 and 2025.”
Tennis Australia financial accounts lodged with Asic in December revealed the state government forgave a $43m loan to the organisation accrued during the Covid pandemic.
Thanks to this “one-off derecognition”, the organisation reported a surplus of $62m in FY2023, yet finance losses for the period still increased to $6.4m.
Revenues – which increased from $499m to $542m – include funding from the Australian Sports Commission, Department of Foreign Affairs and state tourism bodies.
Tiley said his organisation was hoping to make the most of the Melbourne Park precinct and invest in coming years, but that the pandemic tested his organisation’s financial wellbeing.
“It was more around cost reduction over the last year, so we could accelerate the investment in the future,” he said.
The Victorian deputy premier, Ben Carroll, highlighted what the state’s investment had delivered.
“The statistics speak for themselves. $2.7bn has been contributed to the Victorian economy over the past 10 years of the Australian Open.”
The move from a 14 to a 15-day tournament is expected to generate more than $10m per year in additional revenue through gate receipts and broadcast income. The Australian Open is the second grand slam to make the change, after the French Open in 2006.
Tiley has said it is to reduce the likelihood of late night finishes in the early rounds, but it means players must spend more time in Melbourne, and the event invades the calendar traditionally dedicated to lead-in tournaments.
Four-time champion Andre Agassi said there were pros and cons to extending the duration.
“A negative would be to compromise tournaments for players leading up, having earlier finals like in Adelaide, but I think overall it’s a win to give the fans a chance to come out here.”
Last year’s tournament set a visitor record of 839,192, eclipsing the previous best by 27,000. The week of qualification matches this year drew 89,894, up more than 26,000 on 2023.
Carroll said the 1 million visits target in 2024 was realistic.
“When you take into account the Chinese, the Japanese and the US tourism, the Australian dollar, the great Melbourne weather that we’re experiencing today, there’s every reason to believe that we’ll get over 1 million people coming here.”
Tiley said the weather was likely to be the major obstacle.
“It’s Melbourne and we know in two and a half weeks you’re gonna have variability in the weather but at the end of the day, we know we’ve got enough opportunity for our fans to have a great time.”
Reports in recent months suggest the tennis calendar is under pressure from new investment, similar to what has been seen in golf with the emergence of the Saudi Arabia-backed LIV Golf tour.
The top two men’s players, Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz, played in the Riyadh Season Tennis Cup two weeks ago and starting the season with a major tournament in the region has been mooted.
Tiley – who reportedly has helped galvanise the shared interests of the grand slams in anticipation of a push for change – said he empathised with the ATP and WTA.
“It’s a very difficult problem to solve, but the players do need an offseason, they need a really good offseason.”
