The Australian Open is one of the largest tennis events of the year, and is the most attended Grand Slam event with over one million people across the entire tournament. Due to the scale of the event, Tennis Australia set out to put a solution in place to help reduce wait times and long lines. After a successful pilot in 2024, Wicket express entry was expanded for the 2025 event.
Like other events that are at the same size and scale as the Australian Open, long lines are an unfortunate reality for fans – especially at peak times. In an effort to reduce wait times at entrances, Tennis Australia is turning to innovative new technologies to enhance the fan experience and speed up the entry process.
Traditional ticketing systems require physical scans of ticket barcodes, which slows down entry and requires guests to have tickets ready.
Wicket Express Entry allows pre-enrolled users to walk up to a dedicated express lane to redeem their tickets, which are paired with their face.
Thanks to an existing integration with Ticketmaster, the chosen ticketing platform of the Australian Open, Wicket was able to work with Tennis Australia to deploy “Express Entry” lanes. These lanes allowed enrolled fans to simply walk up to a Wicket ticketing kiosk and instantly see their tickets available to scan in seconds – instead of minutes.
Wicket has spent years deploying and learning, from over 4 million guest entries into sports facilities and live events and is an industry leader.
Express lanes were deployed to three key entry locations at the City Entrance, Garden Square Entrance, and Grand Slam Entrance. Enrollment signage was also set up so fans could easily scan a QR code to enroll to skip the lines when they showed up to any of these entrances.
Fans simply need to log in to their Ticketmaster account, take a selfie, and link tickets to enroll.
Over 7,000 fans enrolled to use Express Entry at the Australian Open, and thousands of them were able to breeze through entry at designated entry points in an average of 5 seconds from identification to ticket scan.
Tennis Australia continues to prioritize the fan experience with innovative solutions like Wicket that streamline entry into Melbourne Park. We look forward to expanding the use of this technology in 2026.
Gary Iakovidis
Director of Ticketing & Product Sales, Tennis Australia
