Seven West Media is stepping up its battle for eyeballs with the streaming of more than 2000 hours of tennis across the Australian Open, Hopman Cup, Brisbane and Sydney International tournaments and the Kooyong Classic. 
Live sport remains a key differentiator for free-to-air television compared with the likes of Netflix and YouTube as traditional broadcasters face increasing pressure for audiences.
Expectations are high for Seven's expanded offering on the tennis as it looks to build up momentum towards the Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympic Games in   August next year.
Seven chief digital officer Clive Dickens said the broadcaster will "significantly beat" the numbers it got last year when it streamed its tennis coverage for the first time.
In   January, 1.2 million users streamed Seven's tennis coverage during the month. The network said there were more than 4.4 million streams, 80 per cent of which were live. Of that, 70 per cent of streams were on mobile and tablet.
"We will significantly beat that. We've learnt from that and made it easier for people to access the streams this year," Mr Dickens said. "A year in digital is a long time."
Previously housed within Seven Sport, the metropolitan broadcaster will launch a new website 7Tennis.com.au, as well as new apps on iOS and Android.
Plus7, Seven's live streaming service which broadcasts its linear channels online and launched last month, is available on other devices such as Playstation, Xbox, and Samsung Smart TVs.
More than 300,000 Australians used the Plus7 service to stream to the Melbourne Cup over mobiles, tablets and computers and Mr Dickens said the expanded tennis coverage would see more people taking to the internet for their viewing. "The Melbourne Cup exceeded our expectations and that was in three minutes. We want to create channel-based experiences on screens rather than limiting to broadcast or catch-up," he said.
"We want to be data led in our actions. Events like the tennis give us very clear direction in what consumers are doing and we are able to share that with our clients more than we've been ever able to do."