Olympics need more measures: Tiley

MELBOURNE • Long lines to enter stadiums and queuing for food and drinks will fade away as live sport and entertainment events around the world emerge from the pandemic, Australia's top tennis boss has said.

Craig Tiley said at the Australian Open that premium experiences for fans in the future were going to be all about safety and merging digital experiences with real-life entertainment.

"I think buying your own car and driving your own car, sitting in your own theatre at home, enjoying your own content is going to be much more a thing of the future than it is today, even more so. So our challenge as a sport is, how do we bring people from that environment?" he said.

Tiley, who is chief executive of Tennis Australia and the tournament director at the Open, said safety protocols will become of utmost importance to the live event industry, as will technology that gives fans quicker entry and a better experience inside stadiums.

"So ticketless entry, very quickly that is going to accelerate across the globe for sports entertainment," he said.

"Using your app for access to food and drink will be the same, but access also on your mobile device for all sorts of opportunities for you to serve as a coach, as a critique of the stats, as a predictor of what's going to happen next. That's the kind of value add you need to add to fans."

He said he hopes the Olympics will go ahead - but only if organisers add more rigorous quarantine measures. Tokyo is expected to welcome 11,000 athletes in July but is not considering wholesale quarantine for them.

Tiley said his experience of organising the Australian Open suggested the Olympics needed rigorous quarantine measures.

"I've seen the playbook for the Olympics and I've looked at it carefully," he said. "And compared to what we've done, we've had a far more rigorous programme than is being proposed at the Olympics."

It took a gruelling effort by his 600-strong team over the last 11 months to get the year's biggest sporting event so far ready for crowds amid the pandemic.

That included having 1,200 players, officials and media on 17 flights from eight countries, arranging 14 days of quarantine and more than 30,000 Covid-19 tests.

Despite all that rigour, 10 people still tested positive. No new related cases have emerged, but Tiley is aware that there is still a long way to go.

"I love the Olympic Games," he said. "I'd like to see it be successful. But with the experience we had, I cannot see it working."

He suggested that Olympic organisers extend the Games to allow for longer quarantine periods, with athletes training in their own accommodation, such as on a university campus, before staged competition periods for each event.

REUTERS