AO LIVE
The Australian Open's entertainment platform — and emerging brand in its own right.
- Role
- Product owner, executive producer
AO LIVE is the Australian Open's entertainment platform — and more recently, an emerging entertainment brand in its own right. What began as Finals Festival has evolved into a product architecture spanning ticketed headline concerts in John Cain Arena, free precinct programming across the AO site, Opening Week live music, Celebration Days and the broader festival-value moments that define the tournament's audience experience.
My role has been to help shape AO LIVE not just as event entertainment, but as a legitimate platform with its own identity, audience strategy, market value and commercial model. That means working simultaneously as programmer, commercial operator, brand strategist and stakeholder translator — moving between artist bookings, promoter relationships, ticketing strategy, precinct design, production delivery, marketing planning and executive briefings, often in the same week.
I created the unified AO LIVE entertainment concept as an evolution of the Finals Festival product — grounded in data, market research and music-industry insight — and conceived the full slate of entertainment products. The role has covered managing live event promotion and delivery as well as precinct-level entertainment across the tournament.
Recent focus has been on moving AO LIVE beyond fixed-fee delivery into smarter co-promotion and venture-style commercial arrangements, while broadening the audience profile and increasing the cultural weight of the brand.