One million spectators, a 2-billion global audience, and €345 million: how Australia uses tennis as a state strategy
Jesus de Salvador y Cerdan 
In recent days, we have witnessed a clear example of what a well-led nation—Australia—can achieve through an intelligent, effective, and cost-efficient country strategy and nation branding, using a strategic line of action such as sport—specifically tennis—with the 2026 Australian Open, as a textbook case of soft power.
The data provided by various media outlets, organizers, and economic websites (and processed by AI) are more than compelling and give Australia enviable visibility from a marketing standpoint. A total of one million spectators attended the tournament in person in Melbourne, the capital of the state of Victoria (southeastern Australia); if visiting fans are included, that figure rises to 1.37 million.
In addition, across digital platforms and television broadcasts, the global audience reached nearly 2 billion people. The direct economic impact on the city is estimated at around €330–345 million. There is also a long-term plan, with renewed sponsorships, to ensure that Melbourne Park remains one of the world’s epicenters of tennis at least until 2046.
Beyond the numbers, the tournament projects a modern image of Australia’s nation brand—not only consolidating it, but securing it for the long term as a technologically advanced country. The event served as a testing ground for artificial intelligence, implemented to improve accessibility and officiating, as the first Grand Slam of the year.
From an environmental standpoint, the tournament also emphasizes ecosystem conservation and sustainability: it uses photovoltaic energy and native vegetation to minimize water dependency, reducing external potable water demand by 100%. Additionally, AO Ventures has been created—a business and venture capital platform intended to position itself as a strategic partner for global technology startups and to attract much-desired foreign direct investment (FDI), transcending sport to include entertainment, media, and health.
Another collateral effect of this sporting event is that it provides an opportunity to highlight Australia’s geopolitical relevance on the international stage. To begin with, it is worth recalling that this island-continent, part of Oceania (along with Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia), is home to only about 27 million people—one third fewer than Poland—and was discovered (for the West) in 1603 by the Spanish explorer Pedro Fernández, not by James Cook in 1770.
This Commonwealth country—a community of nations that were once under the British Crown—occupies an important place in the global deployment of the West, particularly the Anglosphere. From multiple perspectives, it is highly relevant: it ranks among the world’s top 15 economies (typically between 13th and 14th), and it plays a key role in global economic security by supplying the world with vast natural resources and energy, thanks to its 7.74 million square kilometers (the sixth-largest country on Earth)—nearly 16 times the size of Spain with almost half its population.
Australia’s importance also stems from physical geography—its global location as a pivot state, following the concept proposed by Zbigniew Brzezinski in The Grand Chessboard. Pivot states are those whose geopolitical importance lies not in intrinsic power but in their location, which allows them to influence or control a strategic region or chokepoint. In Australia’s case, this is the entire Indo-Pacific arc and the maritime routes passing through the Strait of Malacca and Singapore, through which approximately 25% of global trade flows.
This privileged strategic location has led Australia to participate in numerous alliances, agreements, and security forums. One example—widely debated in the European Parliament—is the Echelon network, an electronic security and surveillance system formed by Australia, Canada, the United States, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, created in the immediate post-war period around 1946. Today it has evolved into the Five Eyes alliance, with deep penetration and monitoring of the World Wide Web, and it was prominently featured in the documents leaked by Edward Snowden.
Australia is also a party to the Australia–United States–New Zealand Security Treaty (ANZUS), signed in 1951 during the Cold War to contain the expansion of the communist bloc, primarily the USSR. After a period of crisis in the 1980s and 1990s, the treaty has been revitalized since the second decade of the 21st century, this time with the aim of containing the People’s Republic of China.
In the 21st century, two new arrangements have emerged to pursue this containment strategy. First, in 2007, at the initiative of the late Japanese statesman Shinzo Abe, a non-permanent, quasi-informal dialogue forum was created among Australia, the United States, India, and Japan.
Over time it has experienced ups and downs and has greatly irritated China, which has even labeled it the “Asian NATO,” given its clear Indo-Pacific containment purpose. Finally, in 2021, AUKUS was established—a strategic military-industrial alliance with the United Kingdom and the United States—reportedly to the detriment of France, which lost a multibillion-dollar nuclear submarine manufacturing contract as a result, in favor of the Anglosphere.
Australia’s future appears promising and stable, with economic growth exceeding 2% of GDP, making it one of the best-positioned Western countries. Nonetheless, like other welfare states, it faces challenges such as rising public debt. There is also an ongoing migration debate: two years ago, net immigration reached half a million in a single year; today, the government seeks to reduce that figure to around 250,000. The largest group of immigrants comes from the Commonwealth, followed by China (around 8% of the total). The most telling figure explaining the migration debate is that residents born outside Australia now exceed 30% of the country’s population.
Another challenge, given Australia’s position within the Western bloc, is that its main trading partner—accounting for roughly 32% of exports and 25% of imports—is the People’s Republic of China, the principal challenger to Western global hegemony, or at least to its democratic political system. This creates an ambivalent foreign relationship: China is, on the one hand, Australia’s preferred trading partner, and on the other, its geopolitical rival.
As you can see, a sporting tournament—incidentally won by a Spaniard, Carlos Alcaraz—can say a great deal. It has offered an opportunity to turn the spotlight on our antipodes, on a region—Oceania—where our flag also flew until nearly the 20th century, and where, according to a 1948 study, the atolls of Guedes, Coroa, Pescadores, and Ocea almost should still be national territory. One never knows where the sun may yet set on our lands.
