Andy Murray on AO dramatic TV ratings: “Roger Federer and Kyrgios were missing”

The Australian Open 2023 officially ended a few days ago and the first Grand Slam tournament has come to an end. In these first three tennis months, the Australian Grand Slam was the most awaited event but in Australia they found that the audience data for the event did not meet expectations.

Channel 9, which owns the rights to the event in Australia, achieved a drop of as much as 40% in viewers compared to last year. Really scary numbers that worry everyone. Channel 9 recently signed a $500 million contract through 2030 and there is no doubt the company is concerned about these poor results.

Former world number one Andy Murray chimed in on the matter, saying these negative figures represent numbers for Australia only, but he doesn’t think it applies everywhere. Murray then clarified the reasons, in his opinion, for this dramatic decline.

Here are his words specifically: “I think a drop in interest in Australia was to be expected, Roger Federer, Ashleigh Barty and Nick Kyrgios were missing but I’m not sure this situation applies in every country.”

AO dramatic TV ratings

On social media, where Murray expressed his opinion, there were conflicting opinions.

Some agreed with the Briton while others said tennis is going through a complicated phase. Among these there is also the television expert Colin Vickery and the man brought up the champion of Melbourne and new number one in the world (again) Novak Djokovic.

Vickery clarified: “We know that Novak Djokovic is certainly not a tennis player who attracts ratings, so the fact that he participated this year and not last year changes very little. Tennis is going through a transition phase, Roger Federer no longer plays and at the At the moment there are very few interesting ideas.”

It must be said that the controversy mainly concerns the data in Australia and the forfait in extremis of Nick Kyrgios has further complicated things in terms of audience in the continent where the tournament was played. We recall also that Roger Federer denied his eventual come back on the court, in the past days.