{"id":37481,"date":"2025-08-01T12:55:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T12:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/37481\/"},"modified":"2025-08-01T12:55:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T12:55:08","slug":"atp-tour-trace-further-tennis-fan-engagement-efforts-with-collect-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/37481\/","title":{"rendered":"ATP Tour, Trace further tennis fan engagement efforts with ‘Collect’ program"},"content":{"rendered":"

Building on their NFT-focused collaboration<\/a> around the 2024 ATP Finals, the ATP Tour and digital memorabilia vendor Trace are launching a new fan engagement program called \u201cCollect,\u201d which will run across multiple tournaments through the end of the 2025 tennis season.<\/p>\n

Collect will allow fans to claim digital \u201ccredentials\u201d for events (which look like virtual press passes) and pieces of digital artwork that commemorate individual matches within those events, including the scoreline and participants. <\/p>\n

The program launches in time for the quarterfinals of the ongoing National Bank Open in Canada and will be available from the quarterfinals on for the upcoming Cincinnati Open and Rolex Shanghai Masters, as well as the entire year-end ATP Finals in Turin.<\/p>\n

Continuing a successful collaboration<\/p>\n

Last ATP Finals, the ATP and Trace piloted a different program, branded \u201cMomentum,\u201d<\/a> which featured 24-hour windows for fans to collect NFTs designed using data from 15 matches. The program recorded 75K fan registrants, who collected digital tokens of 770K matches in eight days (averaging more than 10 per user). <\/p>\n

ATP Director\/Comms & Web3 Mark Epps said those new registrants increased the tour\u2019s \u201cdirectly known audience\u201d (i.e., fans subscribed to the tour\u2019s marketing correspondence) by 25%, marking enormous successes in fan acquisition and engagement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat laid the foundation for, \u2018What do we do next?\u2019\u201d Epps said. \u201cThe answer for us was, let\u2019s see if we can serialize this thing over multiple tournaments and prove that what we achieved in Turin [in 2024] is repeatable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Similar to Momentum, fans who participate in Collect will be able to claim collectibles during the day matches take place, local time. The assets are then distributed the following day and stored in individualized digital \u201cvaults.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the ATP and Trace have also made conceptual adjustments, some based on feedback collected through fan feedback forums, surveys and Zoom calls. One is addition of physical giveaways of items such as tournament-specific hats, towels and signed memorabilia.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have been very deliberate in not putting [the giveaways] front and center, because we don\u2019t believe that this is the reason a fan is going to want to join the experience — and it almost shouldn\u2019t be,\u201d Epps said. \u201cWe view these [giveaways] as little surprise-and-delight moments. A way of saying thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Collect\u2019s event-level digital credentials and match-level artwork will also have a different feel than Momentum, leaning on the marketing colors of each tournament and match-specific wrinkles (e.g., Epps said a hypothetical piece on Carlos Alcaraz\u2019s quarterfinal win over Alexander Zverev in 2024 could have included bees, given a swarm of them interrupted that match<\/a>).<\/p>\n

And for the combined ATP\/WTA National Bank Open and Cincinnati Open, the ATP has partnered with the WTA to promote and provide collectibles for women\u2019s matches as well. The tours will co-market the Collect initiative across their apps, email lists, social media channels and websites.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was actually one of the key pieces of feedback,\u201d Epps said. \u201cWe had fans at the [ATP Finals] saying, \u2018Where are the WTA matches?\u2019 despite it being an ATP-only event. Point taken. Fans want both.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ATP and Trace\u2019s ongoing partnership speaks to the tour\u2019s emphasis on fan acquisition and engagement, which Epps noted is underscored further by the fact that Collect is also being used as a platform to begin rolling out a single sign-on product called \u201cTennis ID.\u201d At first, fans will only be able to use this login to participate in Collect, but it could eventually facilitate access to future digital initiatives.<\/p>\n

Collect is also a means for the tour to better learn fans\u2019 tournament, match or player preferences, and potentially treat them to long-term rewards such as gated commerce or real-life experiences (although no plans are finalized there as of now). Eventually, it could serve as a platform to integrate corporate partners in as well.<\/p>\n

And, importantly, the hope is it keeps fans coming back to tennis-related content.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s an underlying thesis here, that Trace is built on, that it\u2019s worth knowing your true fans are and giving them an identity artifact that they carry,\u201d said Trace co-founder and CEO Tareq Nazlawy. \u201cIf fandom is so central to identity, for us as people, then there should be a digital artifact which is reflecting that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Building on their NFT-focused collaboration around the 2024 ATP Finals, the ATP Tour and digital memorabilia vendor Trace…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[753,64,63,85,747,2637],"class_list":{"0":"post-37481","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-atp","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-tennis","13":"tag-wta"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}