Melbourne, 15 December 2012 | australianopen.com

The Australian Open 2013 website was officially launched on Friday, serving up premium tennis content to millions of fans worldwide.

Australianopen.com, developed in partnership with the Australian Open’s technology partner IBM, attracted nearly 15 million unique visitors throughout AO 2012, and will again be the online hub for news and live scores when play gets underway on 14 January, exactly one month today.

The flagship website features match analysis from a team of international tennis writers, the latest tennis news, interviews, photos, statistics, player profiles, historical records and interactive games.

Australian Open photobook Open Shutter will make its online debut next month, presenting a day-by-day pictorial timeline of the tournament for iPad users to share with friends and family.

Australianopen.com features include:

• The popular SLAMTRACKER live scoreboard, complete with draws, schedules, ticketing information, entertainment updates and the bite-sized blog, Popcorn Tennis
• AOTV, with daily highlights, player clips and live streaming of the Australian Open qualifying event from 9–12 January
• The AOTV Vault, with classic matches from Australian Open history dating back to 1998
• AO Radio, for ball-by-ball commentary of centre court action, regular score updates from the outside courts, news, interviews and feature reports
• Prediction game Pick ‘Em, which will run across Australian Open Series events in Brisbane, Sydney and Hobart before the action hits Melbourne Park

Fans on the go will be kept up to date via:

• Mobile site m.australianopen.com, with all the latest news, photos, tournament information and AO Radio commentary
• The official Australian Open Android and iPhone apps, free to download from the App Store and Marketplace in January. Also available for download is the official Australian Open program  for iPad, in the App Store now
• Facebook (facebook\AustralianOpen) and Twitter (@australianopen | #ausopen) accounts, where users will be able to access exclusive photos and tournament updates, have their say, take part in the popular Caption It competition and vote in the daily poll. A 24/7 Twitter service will allow fans around the globe to continue the conversation after the last ball is struck on Rod Laver Arena each night

By the numbers: Australian Open online

• Australianopen.com attracted 14.9 million unique visitors throughout the 2012 tournament, a 48 per cent increase on 2011
• Mobile devices accounted for 114.7 million views, including 15 million tablet views
• Australia, the USA and the UK generated the most visitors throughout Australian Open 2012, but the real movers and shakers were Japan and Brazil. Japan rocketed from No. 14 on the worldwide list of visits in 2011 to No. 4 in 2012, while Brazil moved from No. 23 to No. 14
• A total of 546,200 new downloads and 148,600 download updates were recorded throughout the 2012 tournament
• 11,798,637 videos – totalling 846,478 hours of footage – were watched via AOTV on Australianopen.com in 2012
• After the Home page, Scores and News & Photos were the most viewed pages of Australianopen.com in 2012
• Roger Federer proved the most popular player of the 2012 tournament, generating 408,805 profile views. Novak Djokovic (374,985), Maria Sharapova (359,000), Rafael Nadal(347,154), Victoria Azarenka (336,650) and Petra Kvitova (260,541) rounded out the top six
• The recap of the men’s final was the most viewed article of Australian Open 2012. The headline ‘Djokovic claims longest final’ attracted 183,098 views
• A classic on-court catch from then 14-year-old ballkid Dylan Colaci went viral during Australian Open 2012, with more than 8.2 million views on YouTube worldwide