Yearly, Tennis Australia CEO Craig Tiley points a problem to his staff that will make most executives—and their groups—break into a chilly sweat: Reinvent 50% of the Australian Open. Not refined modifications or a number of tweaks. Half of every thing, so no two tournaments are ever the identical.
As we speak, to assist fulfill Tiley’s mandate, the occasion has advanced right into a three-pronged innovation machine. There’s an in-house R&D lab that’s been creating analytics, broadcast, and fan engagement developments for greater than 15 years, alongside a startup accelerator that’s piloted 40 firms, and a $40 million VC fund to capitalize these startups.
“The 50% innovation problem creates one thing most giant organizations wrestle to domesticate: permission to fail,” says Machar Reid, director of innovation and AO Ventures normal associate.”
It’s working. The 2025 Australian Open set attendance records with 1,218,831 followers by the gates over three weeks, breaking the earlier yr’s mark by greater than 100,000. It attracted 1.9 billion international viewers, drew 2.3 billion social impressions, and generated $565.8 million for host metropolis Melbourne’s financial system. And this yr’s event, which rolls into its ultimate rounds this weekend, is poised to be one other record-setter.
Inside Tennis Australia’s tech workshop
It began with AO Labs, Tennis Australia’s analysis and growth arm. That is the interior division that builds the printed and fan engagement applied sciences which have remodeled how folks watch tennis.
Final yr’s breakout was AO Animated, which makes use of skeletal monitoring to show stay matches into Nintendo Wii-style cartoons. The expertise tracks 29 factors on every participant’s physique at 50 frames per second, creating real-time avatars that transfer precisely because the gamers do. The feed went viral in 2025, drawing nearly 1 million viewers within the first 4 days alone.
The expertise is enjoyable. But it surely additionally solves an actual drawback. Tennis Australia took over its personal broadcast manufacturing in 2015—certainly one of solely two Grand Slam tournaments to manage its personal broadcast (the US Open solely just lately began transferring on this path). Different Grand Slams flip broadcast manufacturing over to networks like ESPN or TNT Sports activities. Tennis Australia maintains inventive management, then licenses that manufacturing to broadcast companions together with ESPN within the U.S. and Channel 9 in Australia.
However these licensing agreements create restrictions. The AO Animated stream capabilities as a authorized work-around. Because it’s generated from monitoring biometric information moderately than counting on video footage, it doesn’t violate exclusivity agreements. Viewers with out broadcast subscriptions might clip highlights and share them.
Followers beloved it. Gamers discovered it hilarious. By week two of final yr’s event, Tennis Australia was offering the feed to a few broadcast companions, and so they’ve introduced it again once more for 2026.
AO Animated is among the many newest in a collection of experiments. However even AO Labs isn’t sufficient to fulfill Tiley’s 50% mandate. To realize that, the staff knew it needed to faucet exterior assets.
Turning Melbourne Park right into a tech incubator
In 2022, Tennis Australia launched AO Startups. The purpose: establish early-stage firms with expertise Tennis Australia might ultimately implement, giving each side an opportunity to check product-market match at one of many world’s greatest sporting occasions.
“Somewhat than attempting to be actually slender with an issue assertion, we keep purposefully broad,” says Reid. “There are events the place we don’t know what we don’t know.”
The 2025 cohort included 12 firms—the most important since inception—spanning digital ticketing platforms, AI-powered personalised menus for dietary wants, automated screening checks, manufacturing venture administration software program, and wearable resistance fits for athlete coaching.
The choice course of is rigorous, however quick. Startups apply by aostartups.ausopen.com, with purposes opening periodically all year long and Tennis Australia saying new cohorts within the lead-up to every Australian Open. Candidates are evaluated on staff high quality, market alternative, ambition stage, and mutual influence potential. These accepted get entry to Tennis Australia executives, pilots throughout the group’s summer time occasions, and pathways to changing into official suppliers.
Every pilot is custom-made based mostly on the corporate’s stage and expertise. Some check merchandise nonetheless in growth. Others run full-scale deployments. Some pilots check throughout Tennis Australia’s complete three-week summer time collection—the United Cup in Sydney and Perth, Brisbane Worldwide, and Adelaide Worldwide—with choose pilots deployed on the Australian Open itself. The custom-made trials give founders real-world suggestions at scale whereas giving Tennis Australia confidence that the techniques work below stress—which is vital, on condition that they’re not simply piloting instruments that improve the printed and fan expertise, however expertise that may influence the matches themselves.
Six engineers vs. one monopoly
In 2021, 4 engineers walked away from Hawkeye, the corporate that had dominated digital line calling in tennis for twenty years. They teamed up with two others and based Bolt6 particularly to construct one thing higher—a cloud-first system that would do issues Hawkeye’s legacy structure couldn’t.
Tennis Australia had been a Hawkeye consumer for 17 years. When Bolt6 approached the staff about piloting new expertise by AO Startups, Reid noticed alternative—and a whole lot of threat.
“[Line calling] is our highest-risk expertise,” Reid says. “If that doesn’t work, we’re in hassle, as a result of it’s calling traces for the taking part in group. It’s not like now we have traces folks ready on standby to leap in if the expertise goes down.”
So Tennis Australia methodically de-risked it, inviting Bolt6 to affix AO Startups. On the 2023 Australian Open, Bolt6 ran in stealth mode alongside Hawkeye on the event’s heart court docket—side-by-side testing, each name in contrast. In 2024, Bolt6 dealt with all Australian Open lead-up occasions and expanded to testing alongside Hawkeye on three stadium courts throughout the principle event. Solely after two years of testing did Tennis Australia deploy Bolt6 throughout all 17 courts for all the 2025 summer time, totally changing Hawkeye.
Danger/reward
The gamble paid off. Bolt6’s cloud structure unlocked capabilities Hawkeye couldn’t ship. As a result of the system is cloud-based, Tennis Australia might centralize operations—working all courts from one location as an alternative of requiring on-site servers at every venue. The system processes sooner and integrates with different platforms extra simply, opening new prospects past simply calling traces.
In reality, it’s Bolt6’s expertise that drives the skeletal monitoring and 360-degree digicam system that AO Labs built-in to create the Wii-style animations and dynamic broadcast angles. Know-how that began as line calling advanced right into a dynamic broadcasting device.
“It’s a real partnership round find out how to create tales for the viewer at dwelling,” says James Japhet, Bolt6 cofounder and chief business officer. “It’s not simply us doing it, that is us working hand in hand with Tennis Australia.”
The partnership has turbocharged Bolt6’s progress. The corporate went from being deployed at three occasions in 2023 to 40 in 2024, round 90 in 2025, and now a projected 170 occasions in 2026, increasing past tennis into sports activities like NASCAR and the PGA Tour.
“I don’t suppose we might have had that very same trajectory with out the partnership and assist of Tennis Australia,” Japhet says.
A worldwide stage for tech startups
One other firm, Raven Controls, got here by AO Startups in 2023 with a unique sort of expertise. Founder Ian Kerr, a former police officer in Scotland who specialised in emergency planning, had constructed an incident administration platform after witnessing chaos at main occasions—security selections that weren’t correctly logged, stakeholders who couldn’t talk, vital data misplaced in radio chatter.
Raven digitizes that coordination. The platform is cloud-based and AI-driven, creating one centralized system the place each incident will get logged, each resolution will get recorded, and safety, medical, and crowd management groups can all see what’s taking place in actual time.
“Earlier than Raven, these techniques have been all siloed,” Kerr explains. “Safety would learn about an incident, however medical wouldn’t. Or crowd administration would see an issue, however it will take 20 minutes to coordinate a response.”
By the point Kerr linked with Tennis Australia in 2023, Raven had already managed UEFA Champions League finals, two Euro soccer championships, and two Ryder Cups.
Reid noticed the worth instantly. The platform might deal with the complexity of coordinating safety, operations, and emergency response throughout Melbourne Park’s 17 courts and sprawling grounds. The AO Startups pilot examined Raven throughout Tennis Australia’s summer time occasions in 2023, giving Kerr’s staff real-world suggestions at scale whereas offering international publicity past their European base.
Finishing the innovation loop
With the in-house lab and exterior tech incubators thriving, in January 2025 Tennis Australia accomplished the innovation loop, launching a $30 million fund referred to as AO Ventures. Backed by 150 traders, together with enterprise capitalist Brad Feld and outstanding Australian households, the fund writes checks of round $500,000 for seed rounds and $1 million for Sequence A, in line with Reid.
Thus far, 4 investments have closed: Bolt6 and Raven, together with two padel properties—Mindspring Padel and Padel Haus. The purpose, in line with Reid, is to put money into roughly 20 firms, with not less than 5 rising from the AO Startups pipeline.
The important thing, Reid says, is that Tennis Australia turns into not simply the investor, however ideally the client as properly. “Our greatest manner of delivering return is for us to be a consumer and be capable to shout from the rooftops,” he says.
After Raven accomplished its pilot and have become a Tennis Australia consumer, the corporate competed for a contract with Legends International, which operates greater than 300 stadiums throughout North America. Legends carried out due diligence with Tennis Australia, and its reference, Kerr says—mixed with Raven’s confirmed efficiency throughout Tennis Australia’s occasions—is what helped Raven win the contract.
“Having Tennis Australia as part of our profile has completely given us a large stamp of approval at a really senior stage,” Kerr says. “That assist was invaluable to us.”
A 70% success price
Ten startups are taking part within the 2026 event, together with the National Pickleball League, VueMotion, and Truefuels. Since launching in 2022, 40 firms have piloted their expertise by AO Startups. Some 70% have turn out to be Tennis Australia suppliers or companions—a conversion price that considerably outperforms typical company accelerator packages, the place 40% to 50% is considered strong.
Tiley has said he needs to make the Australian Open “the largest sporting occasion on this planet.” The three-pronged innovation engine turning startups into international gamers is driving the Open to ever-higher ranges of fan engagement.
“From a management viewpoint, I inform the staff to return and make an apology, not permission,” Tiley told Boardroom. “The strategy is: Simply go for it. If it really works, nice. If it doesn’t, we’ll simply make some changes and provides it a go once more.”
