Australian Open 2024 – BatFast x Tennis Australia

Client: Tennis Australia

Event: Australian Open 2024

Activation: Colourball

Location: Melbourne, Australia

The Brief:

To deliver an engaging fan activation where young fans had the opportunity to pick up a racquet and return serves linked to the three basic levels of Colourball tennis. The three levels were as follows:

RED-BALL LEVEL – Slower ball, smaller racquets, and easy to pick up for a first-time player
ORANGE-BALL LEVEL – Slightly faster ball and bigger racquets, targeted to players that have the ability to display a larger variety of skill on forehands and backhands
GREEN-BALL LEVEL – Faster ball and bigger racquets, targeted towards players that have the ability to display an advanced level of skill on forehands and backhands

The Challenge:

With the average age of the tennis fan being 61, the challenge for organizers has been to introduce and engage young audiences. We used our technology to create an experience for players of various ages and stages so they can step into the Colourball experience and feel like a pro themselves.

The Process:

BatFast in partnership with Tennis Australia worked on three key elements ahead of the Australian Open. They are:
1. White-labelling – a fully white-labeled experience to promote Colourball, Tennis Australia’s program for young tennis players
2. Gameplay and animations – The machine was calibrated to deliver balls at three different levels while Tennis Australia provided Batfast with a video of an animated tennis player serving the ball
3. Hardware shipping – BatFast’s existing presence in Australia helped expedite the process and the set-up was ready ahead of the Australian Open

The Colourball experience was part of the AO Ballpark where families can participate in various activities with their children like testing their serve speed, a tennis training course, hotshots tennis, water park activities and more.

The Fan Experience:

Being primarily targeted at a younger audience, every single player that registered to have a go was able to choose from three different levels outlined below. They would face six serves on the level to return and be scored based on their shot.

Red-Ball: Under 40mph, simple serves to focus on forehands for first-time participants
Orange-Ball: 40-50mph, slightly faster with a mix of forehand and backhand returns
Green-Ball: 65-75mph, the quickest level of the three with a higher variation of forehands and backhands

The scoring system was set up to score higher points for shots that were flatter and down the sides, while shots that were straight down the middle scored lesser points.

The Result:

The Colourball experience was a roaring success at the Australian Open with over 3000 fans facing over 20000 serves in 2 weeks. With a specific target to focus on younger audiences, over 85% of all participants were aged under 18 as Tennis Australia and BatFast delivered an engaging experience that left fans wanting more. With children’s participation in sports on the decline, activations like this are supporting NGBs in overturning the decline in young participants. The environment was extremely inclusive and engaging for participants of all backgrounds and saw a boost in female participants in comparison to previous BatFast events.

Key highlights from the activation included:

20,874 serves were delivered to 3404 players at the Australian Open 2024.
63% of all participants were aged between 4 to 10 years old, whilst another 25% of the participants were aged between 10 and 16 years.
That’s a total of 88% of participants aged under 16.
33% of the participants were female while 61% were male.
Come rain or shine, the simulator was running for all the days.
NPS Score – 66.04%
Average customer rating: 8.9/10

Testimonials and Coverage:

“Inspiring this generation of children to pick up a racquet and a ball is incredibly important to us at Tennis Australia. The collaboration with BatFast allowed us to create the ultimate interactive fan experience to do just that and it really resonated with the kids in our AO BallPark. Batfast’s unique tech mix, which can be easily tailored to other bat-ball sports, also made it the perfect fit for AO Startups..” – Machar Reid, Head of Innovation Tennis Australia