Disillusionment for the Australian TV broadcaster Nine: He recently extended his contract for the rights to the Australian Open until 2023 for 500 million Australian dollars. And was not rewarded for it: Compared to the previous year, the odds at the Australian Open have collapsed by 30 to 40 percent, it is said.
The reasons? Probably also the lack of success of the local heroes. In 2022, Ashleigh Barty had won the women’s singles title, which 4.261 million watched in front of TV – significantly more than the 1.437 million tennis fans who watched this year’s women’s final between Aryna Sabalenka and Elena Rybakina.
Which, by the way, was even more than the endgame between Novak Djokovic and Stefanos Tsitsipas, which actually sounded melodious – which Djoker clearly won in the end. Only 1.32 million viewers were interested here. Last year’s final between Rafael Nadal and Daniil Medvedev was watched by 1.6 million.
In addition to Barty, the cancellation of Nick Kyrgios, whose double victory with Thanasi Kokkinakis in 2022 was a crowd puller, was also noticeable in the overall numbers.
Nine himself was relaxed: it was clear to everyone that without Barty and Kyrgios/Kokkinakis it would have been utopian to achieve comparable quotas.
But the TV ratings were not only moderate in Australia, but also in the USA: The men’s final was the weakest in ratings in more than a decade, according to US media reports.
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The original of this post “Quotas collapse! Interest in tennis is waning in one country of all places” comes from tennisnet.com.
