Tennis Australia Appoints Former NRL CEO Andrew Abdo as Chief Executive Officer
Andrew Abdo | Image by Australian Open
Tennis Australia has its next chief executive, and the choice says a great deal about where the organisation believes its growth now lives. Andrew Abdo, the outgoing CEO of the National Rugby League, will take charge of Australian tennis in August 2026, emerging from a global search that drew more than 150 candidates and was run by executive search firm Egon Zehnder.
The CV behind the appointment
Abdo's grounding is in corporate finance. He was educated at Selborne College in East London, South Africa, before earning a business science degree at the University of Cape Town and an MBA from the University of Pretoria in 2006. He trained as a financial accountant with Deloitte across South Africa and Bermuda, advised and built companies in Johannesburg, then moved to Sydney in 2012 for a year in Deloitte Australia's private growth advisory practice. He joined the NRL in 2013.
That finance-first profile is precisely what Tennis Australia went looking for.
"What excites me about this role is the opportunity to grow participation, strengthen development pathways and ensure success at the elite level — so that more young Australians pick up a racquet and stay lifelong participants."
Abdo said via Tennis Australia
What he did at the NRL
Abdo's record at rugby league is a revenue story. As chief commercial officer from 2013, he was responsible for growing the game's total revenue by roughly 12% a year - from A$334 million in 2015 to A$528 million in 2019 - through sponsorship innovation, new events such as Magic Round, and an in-house creative agency built to service partners.
He became CEO in September 2020 and, alongside Australian Rugby League Commission chairman Peter V'landys, steered the code through the COVID-19 shutdown (the NRL was the first national code to return to play), oversaw expansion through the entry of the Dolphins and the incoming Perth Bears and PNG sides, and pushed the league toward the A$1 billion annual revenue mark. He stays involved with the NRL through July 2026 to help complete a new broadcast deal before relocating to Melbourne.
The mandate
Tennis Australia chair Chris Harrop said Abdo stood out for a leadership record stretching from community level to the elite end of the game, and is well placed to lead the sport into its next phase. Abdo has framed his own priorities around growing participation, strengthening development pathways, and keeping the Australian Open evolving as a global event and fan experience.
The business read
Tennis Australia hired a balance-sheet builder at a moment when the federation's commercial ceiling, not its sporting prestige, is the open question. The Australian Open is already one of the leading events in world sport; the growth job is to extend that globally while making the rest of the calendar pay. Hiring the executive who turned an Australian football code into a near-billion-dollar enterprise is a clear signal of where the board thinks the next decade of value sits.
The risk is equally clear. Commercial scale and grassroots depth are not the same problem, and the critics want both. Abdo's challenge is to prove they can be solved by the same person.
