‘I want to sleep’ says Murray, as viewers stick around for one of the great, but late AO matches
CEO of Tennis Australia, Craig Tiley has hit back at calls for a scheduling change, as Nine’s free-to-air coverage continued to deliver ratings deep into the night for one of the all-time best Australian Open matches.
Starting just after 10pm Thursday evening and ending shortly after 4am Friday morning, Andy Murray triumphed over local, Thanasi Kokkinakis in an epic five-setter, and is being touted as one of the the best matches of the grand slam in years.
Kokkinakis and Murray hug at 4am (image from Facebook)
Media buyers were relishing this year’s event following the success of 2022, however, Kyrgios’ exit before hitting a ball, coupled with last year’s champion Rafael Nadal’s exit due to injury placed a slight dampener on the tournament.
The Age (owned by Nine) senior sports writer, Michael Gleeson filed his match report at 5:38 this morning, and in his opening paragraph called the match “one of the greatest matches that barely anyone saw”, before calling it “a triumph of absurd timing that embarrassed the sport”.
Yet in one of the most anticipated games of the tournament so far, 482,000 Australians were still tuned in at midnight on Nine’s main channel, with 323,000 sticking around until 2am before OzTam’s daily ratings cut-off.
With ratings yet to hit the highs of 2022 as of yet, last night’s near-six-hour is a good sign for Nine execs, despite the noise surrounding scheduling issues.
Nine declined to comment further on the schedule when approached by Mumbrella, yet Tiley was present on the network’s flagship program, Today, this morning to defend it.
“It was an epic match and when you schedule a match like that just before 10 o’clock in the evening before you’re not expecting it to go close to six hours.”
Tiley conceded it was part of the tournament that sometimes “you are going to have these moments”, as he pointed to the weather delays.
Tiley [right] said there would be no change to the schedule
In an on-court interview after the game, Murray said tennis needs “to change this business of playing at three or four in the morning”, as he questioned how beneficial it is for the players.
“We come here now after the match and that’s what the discussion is, rather than it being like, epic match, it ends up a bit of farce.”
While Murray added that it is not beneficial for the ball kids, the umpires, officials, and players, he also said it isn’t good for the fans as well, yet Tiley said there was no chance of a change in scheduling going forward.
“There’s always one,” he said, and that if TA was to only schedule one match at night, the fans would be left without anything should an injury occur.
Nine and Tennis Australia confirmed a long-term future together in November, with a new five-year deal worth $425 million.
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Calum Jaspan was news editor at Mumbrella, based in Melbourne. He was also the producer and host of the Mumbrellacast. He left Mumbrella in May 2023.
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It would be a game person to set up a match that finishes at that time.
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