ESPN Focuses on Live Wimbledon Coverage

Written by: Staff on 21st June 2012

ESPN Focuses on Live Wimbledon Coverage

epa02806473 Petra Kvitova of the Czech Republic serves against Maria Sharapova of Russia during the women's singles final of the Wimbledon Championships at the All England Lawn Tennis Club, in London, Britain, 02 July 2011. EPA/KERIM OKTEN |

ESPN, which outbid NBC for weekend rights for Wimbledon, says that it’s committed to live coverage during the Championships and won’t make the same mistake NBC made by constantly showing taped broadcasts.

“We will televise everything live, and not only on ESPN but on ESPN2 the second week, and on ESPN3 and on ESPN 3D Wednesday through Sunday,” said Jed Drake, ESPN senior vice president & executive producer. “So by Wednesday, the second week, we’ll have in essence four networks televising simultaneously, and that’s the kind of coverage that this event deserves and that we will, as I said, shepherd with great care because we all understand how important this tournament is to our company, to Wimbledon and to our viewers.”

Jamie Reynolds, ESPN vice president, event production, says that ESPN will credential a remarkable 225 people for the event, which does include its technology and engineering partner Vision.

“We are running with the BBC on all production decisions, which has been a great boon for us and a terrific cooperation with them as our partners running through this, and with the support of the All England Club, there are a great many innovations and opportunities to continue to broaden the scope of what this event represents,” Reynolds said.

“It’s fair to say that we have in some categories doubled the work force, and in other categories just to get the volume of hours that we’re doing, we’ve almost tripled. And when you look at it, just the sheer magnitude of operating on a 10-hour day for the first week in the broadcast windows, and then the second week when we’re simultaneously broadcasting on E1 and E2, to say nothing of ESPN 3D and prepping things for ABC, we’ve got a work force that’s running concurrently right about that second week. So that now requires us to have two fully functional integrated control rooms.”

Reynolds added that ESPN would also have three editing rooms running 24 hours a day. The massive network says that it is taking a three-pronged approach to putting its signature on the event, starting with branding its talent and establishing their voice, which become its identity. Then it looks at how it produces the event and will treat it the same as it does major golf tournaments, where its goal is to get the viewers to the most important matches at the right time in a live environment rather than backing things up on tape. Because the network is so heavily staffed it has the ability to whip around the courts and follow multiple story lines.

The third part of the approach begins in the second week when there are fewer matches and then they want viewers to become invested in thrilling contests and who is playing in them.

“As you get farther down in the Round of 16 through the quarters, semifinals and finals, that target approach is then amplified by the feature elements, the look, the feel, the grandeur of the event that we try to deliver the atmosphere of this event, giving it its just place, its just due and give our audience the full experience of being here as if they were on Centre Court or at Court 1,” said Reynolds. “So when you put those three elements together, the voices, the strategy and the focus, either in a whip-around approach and then getting into a targeted approach, that defines the character of what we do.”

Topics: 10sballs.com, ESPN tennis coverage, NBC tennis coverage, Tennis News, Wimbledon tennis news