• Home
• /
• Tennis

'Commercial Australian Open not the ticket'

MELBOURNE - The commercialisation of the Australian Open is shutting out the average punter from marquee matches and the extra dollars will do little to revitalise the game at home, a former director of the tournament has told Reuters.

General admission tickets for the sold-out men’s final on Sunday were priced at A$339.90 ($336), a hike of A$50 on the previous year.

Equivalent prices for the 2011 men’s finals at Wimbledon and Roland Garros have been posted at 110 pounds ($176) and 110 euros ($150) respectively.

“I think the prices for average people have become a bit of a concern,” Paul McNamee, a prominent sports administrator and former CEO of the Australian Open, told Reuters.

“Being the Australian Open and representing Australia it should be egalitarian in character and I would be worried about the accessibility and affordability.”

The Australian Open offers cheap ground passes for A$29, which allow people to wander the minor courts at their leisure, but prices for the headline matches at Rod Laver Arena have become a bugbear for some tennis fans.

“These days the average punter stands next to no chance of getting a seat on the lower concourse of Rod Laver Arena, unless they’re prepared to risk heat-stroke and sunburn during day sessions,” wrote one critic in the Age newspaper.

RUN IT LIKE A BUSINESS

A poll carried in the same paper had 80 percent of respondents saying they thought A$300 was too much to pay for the men’s final.

“Venus Williams’s match was A$105 and they saw three sets of tennis (in the opening match before) she retired after only a couple of games. That was a disappointing scenario,” said McNamee, referring to the American’s pull-out during the third round.

“I can’t see any scenario where you could put up the prices.”

Tickets for Friday’s men’s semi-final and the women’s final on Saturday, starting at A$289.90, were still available.

Tournament organisers have defended their pricing, saying every cent gets pumped back into the development of the game.

“We don’t apologise for running it like a business,” Tennis Australia commercial director Steve Ayles told Reuters.

“There’s always the balance between making it as affordable as possible but at the same time responding to the market and generating the revenue to develop the sport and put back into this event.

“The investment in player development has increased significantly in recent years ... We’re now able to invest four or five times the amount of money we were re-investing five years ago.”

‘SUPPRESSES CREATIVITY’

The commercial success of the grand slam, which generates more than 90 percent of the summer tennis season’s revenues, effectively subsidises the game in Australia.

However, it stands in contrast to the paucity of local players qualifying directly in the draw through their rankings.

French Open finalist Sam Stosur was the only seeded Australian in both the men’s and women’s draws, while ageing twice grand slam champion Lleyton Hewitt was the highest-ranked male at 54.

McNamee said the link between player development and additional funding was tenuous.

The lack of top players was in part due to administrators micro-managing the talent by assigning coaches to players rather than letting them choose their own development paths, he added.

“There’s no evidence that more dollars are going to help the game anyway, otherwise Great Britain would have many more players than they have,” he said.

“You’ve got a situation here where coaches are assigned to players and that’s not an ideal scenario.

“I just believe in a different philosophy where the player gets to choose their own coach and that builds the trust and respect and that should be supported financially and in non-financial ways.

“I think a much more decentralised system and a system that has more freedom in it is the sort of environment where talent and creativity can flourish. I think the model we have now suppresses creativity, which you need to produce players.”