Serving up 6 Australian Open online contest ideas for better tennis marketing
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Tennis greatness is measured in grand slam victories.
So while everyone has their favourite surface or atmosphere, whether it’s at Melbourne Park, Roland Garros, SW19, or Flushing Meadows, when that first slam starts, every tennis fan will be paying attention.
Which wildcard veteran’s going to have an Ivanisevic-like resurgence in their career and break the hometown hero’s heart?
Which big shot junior’s going to go through the qualifiers and make a run past the last 16 to impact the senior game on the biggest stage?
The first big tennis stories of the year are always written at the Australian Open, and that creates marketing opportunities, obviously for the official partners and the major sponsors, but also for any business which can count tennis fans among their target audience.
So with that in mind, here are our top online contest and marketing game ideas you can use to boost your marketing campaigns around the Australian Open.
1. Aussie Opener (Scratch Card)
Everyone’s familiar with the mechanics of a Scratch Card, and it’s such a quick and effective promotional tool that it’s ideal for distributing prizes and promo codes during all the excitement of the Aussie Open.
Say for example, you’re a headphones manufacturer, or a sunglasses designer. You could have participants scratch away to reveal an image of 2-time Aussie Open finalist Pat Cash battling Stefan Edberg in 1987, but sporting your headphones, or your sunglasses.
Something like this makes for an eye-catching meshing of your modern product and the heritage of the tournament.
The prize: For high ticket products like sunglasses or headphones, you could load up your Digital Scratch Card with promo codes and set them to “100% winning game,” so every player is incentivised to make a purchase at the end.
You could also include some witty end-screen copy, stating something to the effect of acknowledging that while your product wasn’t available in 1987, maybe if it had been, it could have turned the tide and helped Cash win his home slam.
Pro tip: To make the experience more varied, load up multiple of the same codes as different prizes, and have the image reveal vary for different runners-up: Wendy Turnbull, Helen Gourlay, etc.
2. Trick Serve Superstar (Media Contest)
If there’s 1 thing you can learn from a doom scroll through social media, it’s that there’s real sports, and there’s taking the most granular aspect of a sport and hitting a new level of specialisation.
So to that trend, customise a media contest and invite participants to video their craziest trick shot serves.
They might:
- Put the ball through a narrow ring at a specified height
- Apply a frightening amount of topspin to put the ball over the back netting
- Hit an object in the service box and cause it to hit another object, setting off a domino effect across the court
Double engagement: Typically, it’s a smaller number of audience segments willing to put themselves out there, and in a case such as this, an even smaller number with the necessary hand-eye coordination. However, more than tenfold that number will happily watch and vote for your winners.
Create and connect a Voting Gallery, validate the best submissions, and have your audience engage with your branded messaging to choose the winner(s).
3. Woodies’ Word Search (Crossword and Word Search Game)
Tennis is a game rich in history, trivia, player intrigue, and even its rules are surprisingly interesting (listen to John Macenroe explain the rules of tennis in great detail on a popular sleep app if you don’t believe us – you’ll be wired and itching to pick up a racket by the end).
As such, there’s plenty of subjects to mine for a tennis-themed Crossword and Word Search game, and you can use the in-game pop-ups to customise promotional messaging relevant to your brand and product offering.
Make it a contest: Enable the leaderboard and see who in your audience really knows their sphairistike from their poona.
Why Woodies? Aussie duo Mark Woodford and Todd Woodbridge (known as “The Woodies”) dominated the professional men’s doubles scene in the 1990s. They’re up there with the most iconic doubles pairings in history, alongside Navratilova and Shriver, the Williams sisters, and the Bryan brothers.
4. Tennis Ball Blaster (Bubble Shooter)
Invite your audience to match up 3 or more tennis balls of the same colour to blow them up and score points.
Set the backdrop to your brand, or even stylised footage of a packed crowd at the Rod Laver arena, with your logo at the top.
Put your product video on an intermediate screen before the experience, and set your strategic product or range page as the link on the call to action (CTA) button at the end.
Enable the leaderboard, and hold a prize draw at the campaign’s conclusion among the best players.
5. Straight Sets Savant (Combo™)
Start them off with an Australian Open trivia Quiz where they can test their grand slam knowledge, and you can use intermediate screens to promote your product.
Follow that up with a tennis themed game of Pacman where a ball boy needs to collect tennis balls for some Aussie Open-themed fun.
Finally, direct them to the Aussie Opener Scratch Card game from the start of this article – or another customised instant win game from the catalogue. Here you reward participants for their participation, and create an opportunity for 1 or 2 lucky players to win a bigger prize.
Pro tip: The Combo™ is designed to combine multiple games which deliver a seamless, immersive, and direct branded experience that can be played in a single sitting.
It should flow quickly for participants like a straight sets demolition – not a 5-set epic in the second week. Don’t bloat your experience with too many intermediate screens. Yes, use them to your advantage, but remember that less is more.
6. Topspin to Win (Spin the Wheel)
Customise your Spin the Wheel segments to the colour of a tennis ball, and load it up with your branded icons and prizes.
Make the backdrop the classic blue hardcourts, stick your logo at the top, and you’ve got a visually engaging tennis-themed marketing tool to distribute prizes as part of your Aussie Open marketing campaign.
Expert advice
Long before Federer, Nadal, Djorkovic, and Murray skyrocketed global interest in the sport of kings through their hard-fought rivalries, tennis was already up there with the most popular sports to watch and play globally. It’s not some niche European thing that you only remember exists at the Olympics, or an overtly American or Australian sport that nobody else gets – it truly is global.
Wherever you’re based, and whatever your industry, there’s a really good chance your target customers are going to be interested in the Australian Open, and inviting sports fans to participate as part of your marketing is the most effective way to stand out from your competitors.
The Australian Open, and the sport as a whole, is rich in facts and trivia around which to customise compelling marketing games and online contests. Those listed here can serve as robust jumping off points for creating your own digital engagement tools to support your marketing campaigns at the start of the tennis calendar.
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