Australian Open By The Numbers

Written by: Bob Larson Tennis on 29th January 2014

Australian Open By The Numbers

epa04030006 Ana Ivanovic of Serbia in action against Serena Williams of the USA in round four of the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne, Australia, 19 January 2014. EPA/JOE CASTRO AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND OUT |

While four days of searing heat affected the 2014 Australian Open attendance a bit, a more than respectable total of 643,280 fans attended this years’ event. The all-time Australian Open attendance record of 686,006 was set in 2012 .

Heineken Day on the middle Saturday of the tournament was the busiest of the 2014 event, with 80,219 fans on site. A first Monday day/night attendance record was set, with 63,595 people on site. The previous first Monday record was 63,520 in 2012 . More than 1800 tennis fans sailed to Melbourne Park on P&O Cruises’ first ever Australian Open cruise.

The Victorian Government announced $338 million in funding for Stage 2 of the Melbourne Park redevelopment, including upgrades to Rod Laver Arena and a footbridge connecting Melbourne Park with Birrarung Marr and Flinders Street Station. Stage 1 of the redevelopment includes the new-look Margaret Court Arena, expected to be completed later in 2014. The new National Tennis Centre, featuring eight Italian clay courts, indoor and outdoor Plexicushion practice courts, a state-of-the-art gymnasium plus treatment and recovery rooms was completed prior to Australian Open 2013.

More than 600 journalists, photographers and videographers from 300 media outlets provided detailed coverage of the Australian Open, including 248 international media from 43 different countries. Asian media represented nine percent of all international accredited media. More than 1000 broadcast media were accredited, broadcasting to more than 200 countries worldwide. Seven on-site networks were from the Asia-Pacific region. The domestic television broadcast reached 13.6 million Australians over the tournament, with 3.1 million Australians tuning in to the men’s final.

There were more than 17 million unique visitors to ausopen.com throughout the tournament period, an increase of 12 percent on 2013 numbers . The largest percentage of online visitors came from Australia, followed by the USA, Canada, the UK, India and China.

The most popular female players of the event were Eugenie Bouchard (372,799 player profile views), Dominika Cibulkova (316,409), Ana Ivanovic (205,971), Li Na (194,304) and Agnieszka Radwanska (190,340).

The most popular male players were Rafael Nadal (292,289), Roger Federer (275,410), Stanislas Wawrinka (222,120), Grigor Dimitrov (172,770) and Novak Djokovic (132,131).

There were more than 4.9 million launches of Slamtracker, an increase of 154 per cent . The official Australian Open App was downloaded more than 1.2 million times across iPhone, iPad and Android devices . The Mandarin scoreboard received more than 7 million downloads. There was a 91 per cent increase in mobile site page views, with more than 35 million page views at m.ausopen.com.

Millions of tennis fans tuned in to AOTV and the live coverage of Australian Open 2014. AOTV (including live and video on demand) accrued more than 14.5 million plays, an increase of 200 per cent on 2013. More than 800,000 hours of content were watched by fans.

The Australian Open YouTube channel had more than 8 million views, with more than 135,000 hours of content consumed by fans.

The Australian Open Facebook page grew to 1,158,308 likes and a total reach of 12.5 million.

On Twitter, @australianopen grew to 440,567 followers, an increase of more than 65,000 fans, up 80 percent on 2013.

Ana Ivanovic’s upset win over Serena Williams drew 123,000 tweets during the match at a rate of 7,232 tweets per minute. New in 2014, Twitter platform Snappy TV totaled more than 900,000 views. Instagram followers increased by 25,054 to 62,876.

More than 10,000 fans ‘checked in’ at the new Social Shack in Garden Square, which was visited by famous faces including Stanislas Wawrinka, Victoria Azarenka, Yannick Noah, Martina Hingis, Ken Rosewall and Judy Murray.

More than 55,000 devices detected and connected to the AO Wi-Fi network, a 35 percent increase on 2013.

The AO Wi-Fi network handled over 14Tb (terabytes) of traffic during the event, a 584 percent increase on 2013

The Wilson stringers hut restrung more than 4200 racquets; using 50km of string  More than 110 racquets were rapidly restrung for players during matches. Serena Williams had the most racquets restrung of all players in the main draw, sending 45 racquets to the stringers.

Matches were officiated by 350 chair umpires and linespersons from 36 countries, including China, Egypt, Greece, Norway and Brazil. Approximately forty chair umpires and 250 lines people per day officiated matches in the early rounds of the tournament.

There were more than 380 ballkids including 341 from Victoria, 13 from interstate, 20 from Korea and six from China in the 2014 squad.

Players were transported by a fleet of 110 Kia cars during the tournament, with more than 40,000 journeys made by 215 drivers.

Around the grounds more than 55,000 sandwiches and baguettes, 150,000 ice creams and 200,000 bottles of Mount Franklin water were sold.

Topics: 10sballs, Agnieszka Radwanska, Ana Ivanovic, Australian Open, Dominika Cibulkova, Eugenie Bouchard, GRIGOR DIMITROV, heat, Li Na, Melbourne, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Serena Williams, Sports, Stanislas Wawrinka, Tennis, Tennis News, Victoria Azarenka