Each year Tennis Australia host numerous events around the country, culminating in the main event in Melbourne, ‘The Australian Open’.
Kicking off the summer was ATP Cup in Sydney on January 1st at two venues: Ken Rosewall Arena and Qudos Bank Arena. The events required duplicate systems for each arena including digital walls, arena production systems for sports presentation, comms systems and Hawk-Eye infrastructure, integrated back to the Melbourne command centre via video and comms links.
Between January 3 _ 15, the Adelaide International ran at Memorial Drive Tennis Centre. This event required on court digital signage, arena replay and scoreboard screens, arena production systems for sports presentation, comms systems and Hawk-Eye infrastructure, also requiring links back to the Melbourne command centre. Scoreboards, shot clocks and serve speed displays were also provided on the outside courts.
Simultaneously on January 3, The Melbourne “Summer Set” kicked off at Melbourne Park and ran until January 10. The tournament was held on centre court, Rod Laver Arena along with numerous outside courts, operating all technologies provided for the Australian Open in these areas.
After the ATP Cup wrapped up in Sydney on January 10, next day the Sydney Olympic Park Tennis centre hosted the Sydney Tennis Classic, running until Jan 15. The main arena used the same setup as the ATP Cup along with additional scoreboards and shot clocks on the external courts.
In 2022, Creative Technology provided over 2,000 sqm of LED product on Australian Open in Melbourne, providing the four main arenas with 360-degree digital walls. Rod Laver Arena and Margaret Court Arena use our latest MC3 3mm product, while John Cain and KIA Arena use the MC5 5mm product. In addition, each arena is fitted with IMAG screens and full production systems for the sports presentation requirements.
The Melbourne Parks precinct houses 35 outdoor courts in supplement to the Arenas, and Creative Technology installs two scoreboards, speed serves, shot clocks along with all vision infrastructure to support the video line calling systems on each court. The precinct is transformed for the Summer of Tennis into a festival environment with restaurants, bars, activities for children and mini-live sited. Throughout these areas, custom built information towers and patron viewing screens with audio systems display live match data and venue safety info, so no one onsite misses any of the action and stay safe as they roam the venues. Each of the displays are given feeds from a central production system allowing any source to be sent to any display across the site. Creative Technology’s comms and distribution team link it all together and this is an extensive job which takes approximately 1000 fibre cores, 40 x fibre optic nodes and close to 200 ports of comms.
From the “walk of champions”, a setup on consisting of 104 units of our 1.8mm LED banners and 2mm screens at the start & end of the player walk as the players enter Rod Laver Arena, to the remote press conference setups for post-match interviews, Creative Technology support Tennis Australia achieve the very highest of standards for the players, patrons and worldwide viewing audiences for the first Grand Slam of the year.
Below is a little glimpse from the Australian Open “Almost Open” series of video’s produced by Tennis Australia, featuring Creative Technology’s very own Project Manager, Toby Harding.
