Pandora’s Box

If Christmas did not deliver the gifts you wanted, not all is lost. As sports fans we constantly live in hope there is something new, different, or special just around the corner. The sporting calendar has evolved in such a way that team owners, event organizers, broadcasters and athletes are always exploring new ways of retaining their current fan base and attracting new followers and future fans. Essentially, it is the simplest definition of marketing: to acquire and retain customers, at a profit.

The four Grand Slams in tennis are firmly established in the sporting calendar, starting with the Australian Open in Melbourne each January. It is no surprise that Netflix’s docuseries Break Point was released a few days before the first round starts on Monday. Following in the footsteps of the wildly successful Drive to Survive in Formula 1, tennis has a lot of catching-up to do as the fifth season of Drive to Survive will hit our screens in February 2023. But don’t get your hopes up too much, Break Point only contains five episodes with another five expected in the summer of 2023.

Spoiler alert, if you are a tennis fan or already follow the Grand Slams and some of the familiar players, there is not much ‘extra’ for you. To raise expectations, Nick Kyrgios is the focus of episode one with a re-cap of his exploits winning the men’s doubles title at the Australian Open in 2022. There are some behind-the-scenes exchanges but not the same level of intensity that Drive to Survive offered. For many years the inside stories from the F1 Paddock, motorhomes and drivers were extremely limited. In Drive to Survive there is more rivalry, sniping and snarling between the F1 team principals and drivers. Sometimes a formula that works for one ‘product’ does not work so well for another. Matching the success of Drive to Survive will be challenging. According to media experts four seasons of the series has boosted F1 TV viewership by almost 50% worldwide, and especially amongst younger viewers. In addition, broadcaster rights fees for ESPN in the US, where F1 was seen as a niche sport, have risen from $5 million to $75 million per year.

The challenges facing tennis are captured by another jewel in the tennis box, namely the historic Davis Cup. Having acquired a 25 year agreement to run and commercialize the Davis Cup, Kosmos, the Barcelona based agency had their agreement terminated by the ITF after five years. Promising an investment of $3 billion over the 25 year period required some radical changes to the qualifying format and playing the finals in five different locations across Europe. Despite the changes, Kosmos wanted to reduce the annual $40 million license fee to the ITF, which resulted in a parting of ways. Fortunately, the 2023 Davis Cup is not in jeopardy as sponsors and city hosts were already committed for 2022 and 2023. No doubt this will allow Kosmos founder Gerard Piqué to invest more time and effort in another of his newest concepts, Kings League, a seven-a-side football competition where amateur and professional players play on the same team. With some twists in the format there are ‘Golden Cards’ that allow teams to remove an opposition player, goals counting as double in the next minute and penalty shoot-outs that start on the halfway line. As usual, there are critics, but the first set of fixtures generated 800,000 viewers streamed live on Twitch.

If you thought the metaverse would remain in our rearview mirror of 2022, think again. The Australian Open is committed to exploring new ways of entertaining fans via the online gaming platform Roblox. Under the banner of AO Adventure, a variety of digital games allow gamers to explore the world of the Australian Open. A humanoid of Nick Kyrgious makes an appearance as well as a humanoid cabin crew from Emirates, the official airline sponsor of the tournament. The 6,776 AO ArtBall NFTs launched in 2022 will be supplemented by another 2,454 2023 AO ArtBalls. No idea what I am talking about? Don’t worry, you can also win prizes such as free tickets, unique wearables and exclusive behind the scenes streams.

And herein lies the curse of Pandora’s Box, a modern metaphor for trouble or complications arising from a single, simple miscalculation. Each sport, event, team, player, or fan has a different identity and characteristics. Assuming current or future fans are looking for a similar format or experience is a common mistake. Yet administrators, rights owners and entrepreneurs insist on trying to recreate the magic formula. Pandora, due to her insatiable curiosity was only able to close the lid on a timid spirit known as ‘Elpis’, usually translated as ‘hope’. And that is all we are left with as we embark on another year of sport.