The fan insights helping Tennis Australia ace merch sales at the AO

When more than a million people stream through the gates of Melbourne Park in three weeks, retail stops behaving like a row of shops and starts operating like an infrastructure play. For Tennis Australia, the Australian Open’s merch program is no longer a sidelines add‑on; it is a live, data‑driven ecosystem that has to perform at the same level as the tennis itself.

“It means planning inventory and staffing almost like a live event operation rather than a traditional retail rollout,” Tiago Arguelles, head of retail at Tennis Australia, told Inside Retail. With more than 15 stores of different sizes and roles across the precinct, each behaving differently depending on its location and audience – from the high‑intensity concourse outside Rod Laver Arena to more leisurely traffic near the practice courts or Grand Slam Oval.

From souvenir stand to segmented ecosystem

The scale of the Open brings shopper segmentation into sharp focus. “What’s interesting at the Australian Open is how clearly different shopper profiles show up in the data,” Arguelles explained.

Tourists, according to Arguelles, still gravitate towards classic souvenirs, products that say ‘I was here’, driving collections that namecheck Melbourne and the year. Locals, by contrast, tend to shop more intentionally, often trading up into premium ranges or collaborations because they see AO as a lifestyle brand, not just an event. Families skew to entry‑level price points and kids’ products, while corporate and hospitality guests lean heavily into premium, limited‑edition items.

That diversity of demand, compressed into three frenetic weeks, forces Tennis Australia to treat the precinct as a portfolio, not a monolith. Range, price architecture and even visual merchandising are tuned by micro‑location and audience, with logistics planning done backwards from expected attendance by day, weather patterns, match schedules and historical demand.

Building a temporary network from scratch

Behind the scenes, the Open’s retail footprint is closer to a pop‑up mall than a cluster of kiosks. “Each year we’re essentially building a temporary retail network from scratch: we have 15 stores, all different sizes and with different product mixes,” Arguelles said.

That means moving large volumes of stock on site, standing up a dedicated warehouse, staging store builds, testing systems, training predominantly temporary staff and then running constant replenishment on a daily basis. The operational risk is acute: with more than a million visitors and no quiet days, there is no second chance if systems fail.

“The key is having visibility and control. Without real-time stock movement and sales data, you’re always reacting too late,” he said. In this context, every inefficiency – a delayed delivery, a stockout on a hit line, a slow checkout – is magnified by the sheer density of demand.

Complexity at speed: why tech has to disappear

That pressure has driven a rethink of the tournament’s tech stack. “The biggest challenge we were trying to solve was complexity at speed,” Arguelles said. “The AO is nothing like a standard bricks-and-mortar environment… there’s no second chance if systems fail.”

The new platform had to comfortably absorb high transaction volumes, support mobile selling and multiple store formats, allow rapid onboarding of casual staff and track live inventory movement, while still plugging cleanly into Tennis Australia’s broader ecommerce environment. The goal, he stresses, wasn’t futuristic bells and whistles; it was robustness and simplicity.

For fans, the payoff is tangible. “The biggest difference is speed. Shorter queues, faster checkouts and more payment options,” he said. With in‑venue POS and ecommerce now on the same backbone, the team can also experiment with click‑and‑collect, more accurate stock availability, and more personalised offers on-site, making retail feel like part of the broader AO experience instead of an isolated transaction.

Real-time decisions, not post‑mortems

In a three‑week tournament, yesterday’s report is too late. “Real-time data is everything,” Arguelles said. His team monitors sell‑through by product, store and time of day, stock cover by location, conversion and average transaction value, and uses that feed to make live calls.

“That data directly informs decisions in the moment, whether we need to move stock across shops, push certain products harder or change visual merchandising,” he explained. The aim is not perfect prediction but being able to respond hour by hour rather than discovering issues at the end of the day.

The ability to see sales and inventory on a mobile device while walking the grounds has been a “game changer”, collapsing the distance between decision‑makers and what is happening on the floor.

The next five years: from precinct to platform

Looking ahead, Arguelles expects grand slam retail to become less tied to the fortnight and more like a year‑round brand platform. “Over the next five years, I see AO retail continuing its expansion into international markets and off-site,” he said.

He also anticipates a more connected, data‑led and experiential model, where the line between physical and digital “keeps blurring” through unified customer profiles, smarter personalisation and deeper integration with ticketing and content. In that vision, a fan’s purchase history, attendance and digital engagement inform each other, creating a more coherent view of the audience.

One lesson he believes will resonate beyond Melbourne Park is that “simplicity scales”. In highly complex, time‑boxed environments, he argued, the winners will be those with technology that’s intuitive, flexible and fast to deploy. That mindset, he suggested, will shape how other major events approach commerce: seeing retail not as an afterthought or a nice revenue stream, but as a core part of the fan experience.
At the world’s biggest tournaments, the shopfront may be temporary, but the expectations are not. As the AO shows, the new baseline is clear: if the match is world‑class, the merch has to be, too.

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