It\u2019s January, which for most people means getting back to normality, maybe a return to the gym, or just looking to set new goals for the 12 months ahead. But for tennis fans, the turn of the year means one very important thing: it\u2019s Australian Open time.<\/p>\n
The Australian Open<\/a> might not carry the same prestige as Wimbledon<\/a> or its French counterpart, but one thing it can lay claim to is some of the sport\u2019s best atmospheres. Fans flock to Melbourne Park to catch a glimpse of the first Grand Slam of the year, with 2026 set to be no different.<\/p>\n But something that is different for the 2026 edition is the opportunity for Australian tennis fans to win \u00a35million from the comfort of their own home. That\u2019s because one of the event\u2019s sponsors have put together a competition where fans will win \u00a35m for correctly predicting all of the results from either the men’s or women’s singles draw.<\/p>\n Overall, it works out at 127 matches predicted correctly across the two-week tournament, with fans having to submit their guesses after the main draw is completed on Thursday. Entries will then close one hour before the opening match on Sunday morning, and fans are only permitted to submit one entry per draw for the men\u2019s or the women\u2019s bracket.<\/p>\n The bad news for fans outside of Australia is that the competition is only open to those living down under. However, if there are no successful predictions, consolation prizes worth around \u00a350,000 will be handed out to the competitors with the most correct guesses. Which is probably for the better, seen as though it\u2019s estimated that the odds of correctly guessing all 127 matches comes in at around 1 in 170,141,183,460,469,231,731,687,303,715,884,105,721.<\/p>\n Following the announcement, Tennis Australia Chief Commercial Officer Cedric Cornelis said: \u201cThis is a game of skill, not chance. The AO Bracket Challenge is about rewarding tennis knowledge and creating an exciting new way for fans to engage with the tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n Unsurprisingly, in the men\u2019s draw, Jannik Sinner<\/a> starts the tournament as the favourite. The Italian is unbeaten in each of his last two appearances at Melbourne Park, with familiar foe Carlos Alcaraz<\/a> just behind in the odds. Meanwhile, in the women\u2019s draw, last year\u2019s runner-up Aryna Sabalenka <\/a>is the favourite ahead of Iga Swiatek<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s January, which for most people means getting back to normality, maybe a return to the gym, or…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406627,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[7641,171439,171438,171440,49,48,82,593,87949,621],"class_list":["post-406626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-australian-open","tag-australian-open-draw","tag-australian-open-news","tag-australian-open-predictions","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-tennis-latest","tag-tennis-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}