The oldest tennis tournament in the world, the Wimbledon Championships is one of the more digitally mature major events on the sporting calendar. According to research for our recently published Digital Transformation Regional Market Report 2024 | UK, the event’s organizer, the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club (AELTC), is among the top three rights holders in its domestic market, based on its digital transformation efforts, and the top five for its respective digital and data-maturity levels.
Furthermore, the tournament is also delivering considerable growth for its rights-holder media partners and ticket sales. The 2023 edition saw its host broadcaster the BBC exceed digital viewership records for the event, surpassing 54.3 million streams via its online platforms, while the Championships also set a 532,651 tournament-attendance record.
By comparison, the 2024 French Open, also known as Roland-Garros, welcomed 630,000 fans throughout the tournament, including the event’s qualifying rounds held during the week before the two-week championship. For the first time in the event’s history, the French Open went fully ticketless with fans able to purchase tickets via the Roland-Garros mobile app. According to the French Tennis Federation (FFT), the event’s organizer, its digital initiative would eliminate the need for paper tickets and help reduce the time fans spent queueing.
As professional tennis continues to digitalize the fan experience and continuing N3XT Sports’ proprietary research into the state of sport’s digital transformation, our team highlights how tennis’ four Grand Slam tournaments are re-imagining their digital product portfolios and, importantly, which of the event organizers are setting benchmarks for their fan-data collection.
TENNIS UNIQUELY PLACED TO ENHANCE ITS DIGITAL & DATA CAPABILITIES
N3XT Sports research is carried out with the sole purpose of highlighting the opportunities and benchmarks for digital transformation throughout the sports industry. Covering three pillars, our unique methodology measures each organization for the strength of its direct-to-consumer (D2C) portfolio, the breadth of its fan-data collection, and social media presence.
An organization’s overall digital transformation score is calculated by taking the average of its scores for these three pillars. Download our latest reports to gain more insights into our research methodology and findings. Research for this article was carried out in May 2024.
- AUSTRALIAN OPEN – OVERALL SCORE 76.7%
The Australian Open, organized by Tennis Australia (TA), scores highly for its D2C product portfolio, which includes a dedicated website, mobile app, ecommerce and ticketing platforms, video-streaming offering, and gaming/fantasy product. However, while equal to its peers for its digital-maturity level, the event receives the lowest score for its first-party fan-data collection, and is one of two Grand Slam tennis tournaments, including the US Open, not to utilize a single sign-on (SSO) across all its data touchpoints.
Similar to the US Open, which is also organized by its national governing body, Tennis Australia collects first-party fan data across web, ecommerce, and ticketing, albeit does not do so via its mobile app or its video content. Notably, the Australian Open operates the Infosys Bracket Challenge fan-predictor game, which requires the user to sign up using either a Google or Amazon login. Users also require a separate login to access the tournament’s online shop.
- FRENCH OPEN – OVERALL SCORE 93.3%
The French Open, organized by the FFT, also known as Roland-Garros, scores highest for its data maturity of the four tennis Grand Slam tournaments. According to N3XT Sports research, while every event analyzed owns a diverse D2C portfolio and broad social media presence, the FFT allows fans to access all its data touchpoints across multiple tournaments, including Roland-Garros, using an SSO.
The dedicated FFT web login is integrated across the tournament’s dedicated website, mobile app, ecommerce and ticketing platforms, as well as the RG Fantasy Game by Infosys, and can also be used to access the federation’s Ten’Up and Paris Masters tournament platforms. Albeit the highest scorer for its digital transformation, the FFT still holds capacity to expand its data capture by enabling subscribers to access exclusive content via its video-streaming offering.
- WIMBLEDON – OVERALL SCORE 90%
The Wimbledon Championships, organized by the All England Club, rivals Roland-Garros and the FFT for both its digital and data-maturity levels. In contrast to the French Open, the tournament and event organizer collects first-party fan data separately from the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA), the governing body of tennis in Great Britain. By comparison, the Wimbledon Championships allows fans to log into all its data touchpoints using the myWimbledon web login and SSO, including via social media.
Nevertheless, although Wimbledon provides an equally diverse D2C portfolio, including a dedicated website, mobile app, and its own ecommerce and ticketing platforms, the tournament does not collect first-party fan data via its video-streaming offering nor via its numerous fantasy/gaming activations, including its Wimbledon Smash mobile game. While every sports organization is different and tailors its digital and data strategies to their respective audiences, the Wimbledon Championships also holds the capacity to augment its fan-data collection.
- US OPEN – OVERALL SCORE 80%
The US Open, organized by the United States Tennis Association (USTA), also receives a maximum score for its D2C product portfolio, which provides fans access to the dedicated US Open website, mobile app, ecommerce and ticketing platforms, as well as a video-streaming capability and fantasy/gaming product.
Although the USTA owns a web login, this is not active across its US Open properties, while the event’s data touchpoints are limited to web, ecommerce, ticketing, and its Million-Dollar Bracket Challenge fan-predictor game, presented in partnership with the USTA’s technology partner IBM.
Unlike the FFT and AELTC, the USTA does not yet provide access to its data touchpoints via an SSO, which would help serve the tennis fan with a seamless experience and consolidate USTA fan data across its customer-facing platforms. This would present the US Open with a strong foundation for enhancing its data-collection capability and inform the delivery of personalized D2C experiences to every fan.
WHAT’S N3XT?
Tennis is a consumer staple, which can be demonstrated by the sport’s investment in the vast array of D2C fan experiences among its Grand Slam events, as well as the popularity of the sport via its digital and social media platforms. Albeit a driving force when it comes to digital product development, the sport holds opportunities to improve its data-collection capabilities across the board, particularly when it comes to its tournaments’ and organizers’ first-party fan-data collection and consolidating data strategies across multi-stakeholder events.
Our team at N3XT Sports works tirelessly to develop and implement data and digital transformation strategies across a multitude of sports properties at federation level, competition level, and club level. To find out more about how N3XT Sports can serve your organization, fill out the form below, and we’ll be in touch. Our goal is to drive the digitalization of the sports industry and our clients.