The official Australian Open 2012 website launched today bringing fans and diehard tennis enthusiasts the most extensive coverage of the first Grand Slam of the year in the tournament’s online history.
The website’s audience exceeded 10 million unique visitors in 2011 and is poised to soar across mobile platforms with a range of new features aimed at maximising the Australian Open experience.
Produced by Tennis Australia with Australian Open technology partner IBM,
www.australianopen.com sees the return of a new SLAMTRACKER live scoring application – fully viewable across tablet devices – providing comprehensive match stats across all courts, live text commentary, and a momentum visualizer for featured matches, which also identifies the ‘keys to a match’.
Fans will find their voice within SLAMTRACKER, adding comments about featured matches through Facebook connect and a promoted Twitter match hashtag.
AOTV returns with free live streaming* from seven courts ensuring you won't miss a single point of main draw action. Fans can also watch the countdown to the Australian Open with worldwide live streaming of AO Qualifying, official draw ceremony and MLC Kids Tennis Day on australianopen.com and YouTube. As well as live matches, AOTV offers daily highlights, interviews, features and a video archive featuring classic moments from past events. The popular ‘Open Drive’ presented by Kia Motors, where players are interviewed while travelling to and from the tennis, also returns in 2012.
Starting 1 January, fans can watch daily highlights, interviews and off-court features on YouTube from Australian Open Series events in Brisbane, Sydney, Hobart and the World Tennis Challenge in Adelaide .
Australian Open digital is proud to release the AOTV VAULT - an exciting new asset housing 113 full-length tennis matches captured at the Australian Open between 1998 – 2011. Each match has been curated so that users can easily find important moments, whether searching for highlights, set points, match points, break points, cracking aces, epic rallies and sensational winners. Users can filter matches by Player, by Year, by Championship Matches, by Classic Matches, by Great Comebacks and by Upsets. Users can share moments with friends via e-mail, Facebook and Twitter. This exciting new video treasure chest – vault.australianopentv.com - has been developed in partnership with Thought Equity Motion, who has produced similar successful platforms for American men’s basketball and football.
Also for the history buff,
www.australianopen.com houses the RESULTS ARCHIVE showing every draw, scores and individual player data from the first year the Australian championships were played in 1905.
With the Australian Open Facebook page close to 500,000 friends, 2012 coverage will embrace social media extensively, engaging with fans 24 hours in a new FAN CENTRE on
www.australianopen.com. FAN CENTRE seeks to discover the ‘social media champion’ of Australian Open 2012 by tracking how top players are trending on the website. Fans can influence a player’s ‘site ranking’ by contributing to the Twitter chat and ‘liking’ content across the website.
The new PICK ‘EM game in FAN CENTRE will give those who like predicting match outcomes a chance to challenge their friends, set up leagues or win daily prizes in the Australian Open PICK ‘EM rounds, culminating in an overall winner. Those who think they know everything about the Australian Open championships will enjoy the AO TRIVIA CHALLENGE, an addictive tennis knowledge drill with leaderboard on Facebook.
In 2011, more than 700,000 fans updated or downloaded the official iPhone app developed by IBM, and mobile site page views across the board increased to eight million, marking a 63 per cent increase.
The free iPhone app returns with live scores, draws, schedule, photos, news and a new GPS feature for those wanting to locate key points around the grounds. Those with Android phones can also for the first time download the official Android app developed by IBM.
Both apps, smart phones and the mobile site – m.australianopen.com – will live stream AO RADIO – with play-by-play coverage from Rod Laver Arena and Hisense Arena. Delivered by a team of international tennis broadcasters, AO RADIO is also streamed live off
www.australianopen.com and can be heard on 99.7 FM around the grounds and within several kilometres from Melbourne Park.
The Official Australian Open Program is available for download free of charge from 16 January 2012 in a new iPad app presented by ANZ. The digitised program includes extended photogalleries and videos, as well as live scoring and daily news from Australian Open 2012.
The popular Changing Ends Film Festival returns for a third year with the theme TENNIS ESSENCE. Short films on the subject will be screened on giant screens in Garden Square and Grand Slam Oval during the Australian Open, with the overall winner taking home $5000.