Nine has used its annual tennis launch to highlight how tennis on Nine in 2022 is not only summer’s biggest marketing platform but also the most effective.
With two of Australia’s favourite sporting heroes, Ash Barty and Dylan Alcott, leading the world tennis rankings and both coming off incredible Wimbledon performances, Nine’s 2022 Summer of Tennis promises to again deliver huge audiences and provide marketers and brands with a unique platform to begin their calendar year plans.
“We can’t wait for the Australian Open to kick-start 2022 before continuing the momentum into the other Grand Slams of Roland Garros and Wimbledon, all of which deliver highly engaged audiences for us,” said Brent Williams, Nine’s director of sport.
“We saw Wimbledon smash records on Nine this year, with well over two million people tuning in to watch Ash Barty fulfil her childhood dream of winning the Wimbledon title. Those audiences will be tuning in for the Australian Open and Nine’s Summer of Tennis”.
Commercially, Matt Granger, Nine’s director of sales – sport, noted that summer would be a major inflexion point for Australia as agreed vaccination benchmarks are set to be achieved and key states transition out of lockdown.
“After almost two years of living with a pandemic, we believe the summer of 2022 will be a real turning point,” said Granger.
“We have seen this year that sport is the one thing which has brought us together as we cheer for and celebrate our heroic athletes. As we look ahead the Australian Open will do just that and help to inspire a nation. The Australian Open is on the world stage in terms of timing, reach, impact and effectiveness.”
2022 will be the first year that Nine can offer marketers and brands an integrated solution across television (both metro and also regional for the first time), as well as print, radio and digital.
“Nine has invested heavily to create an unrivalled content and total TV strategy,” said Granger.
“The blend of assets at Nine delivers our audiences something unique that no other media company in the world can offer. From print, radio, digital and now to TV, on both a metro and regional basis, we really have a powerful combination of touchpoints when it comes to tennis.”
He pointed to the incredible results achieved by major brand partners over the past three summers of the Australian Open, such as Kia, Samsung and Swinburne University. As measured through Nine’s marketing solutions division, Powered, all three demonstrated significant uplifts in brand consideration, awareness and purchase intent.
Granger said: “Tennis is the only proven summer platform to increase brand perceptions. We have looked at the average uplift across all brand metrics measured for our major sponsors of Nine’s Summer of Tennis over the past three years, and we found that the biggest impact is on perceptions of quality, trust and innovation.”
“For any marketer looking to increase any of these metrics, Tennis on Nine is not just the perfect platform but also the most effective.”
