TV coverage of major tennis tournament has become more and more extensive every year: these days at Grand Slams (or even Masters 1000) every court where main draw matches take place are covered by quality tv images and right-holders can avail of those images to their liking. Some of them have extra TV channels specifically dedicated to outside courts during the specific event (like DirecTV has done for a few years), some others provide extra feeds to their existing subscribers via web or app (like ESPN3 or ESPN Watch), or they can decide to include them in a separate Over-The-Top (OTT) offering (like Eurosport Player in Europe or ESPN+ in the USA).
This almost exponential increase of feeds available is made possible by technological advancements in the field of robotic cameras, allowing host broadcasters to cover a higher number of courts with a much smaller number of people than it used to be necessary, shifting the break-even point in the business case and therefore making the entire operation economically feasible.
During the 2018 US Open, ESPN, host broadcaster and exclusive rights-holder for the USA, decided to cover the outside courts at Flushing Meadows using a new technology made possible by the combination of the SimplyLive ViBox System and the Fletcher Tr-ACE robotic camera. This technology was due to be introduced at Wimbledon in July, but tests performed last spring were not satisfactory and it was decided to delay the debut until the US Open after a substantial software upgrade during the summer.
ViBox and Tr-ACE allow a court to be covered with four cameras controlled remotely by only two people sitting in the control room situated somewhere in the broadcast compound near the South Gate. “A more traditional coverage would require 8-9 people per court – says Steph Trudel, who has been the graphics operator on Centre Court at Masters 1000 tournaments for the past 18 years, and has moved to the director position for the first time at this US Open with the ViBox technology – with this new method you just need one camera operator and one director/producer sitting side by side to deliver a professional product”.
Two of the four cameras on court are positioned behind the baseline: Camera 1 is the main camera showing the match and Camera 2 has a different angle and is used mainly for replays. Then you have two extra cameras located on one side of the court and they focus on the players. The Tr-ACE system used a facial recognition software to identify the players and detects all movements on courts: this way it moves Camera 3 and 4 to make sure the identified player is always at the center of the screen. The camera operator is responsible to set which player needs to be followed by which camera depending on the score, who serves, who returns, etc… “Whoever does this job needs to know tennis, so that they can ‘tell the story’ of the match, patching together all the most relevant elements – says Trudel while he leads us through the various desks in the ESPN control room for ViBox courts. There are 12 desks for courts 4 to 15, and each desk has two people working side-by-side (the operator and the director); behind the curtain there are 4-5 people taking care of the “shading” who make sure that all the cameras have the right settings to produce optimal images depending on the time of day, position of the sun, etc… Finally, there is a desk for the supervisor of the entire unit and one for a person receiving all the funny clips of curious episodes happened on the various courts so that the digital team can share them on the website or on social media.
The feeds from the four cameras are all shown on a touch-screen display in front of the director/producer who can select what image is put on the air. They can switch camera directly or via a “fade in” system that uses a dedicated preview window. There is a toggle button allowing the director to rewind the scene and offer a replay from the various angles, a window for the Hawk-eye image (in case a call is being challenged), the graphic for scores and stats coming directly from the chair umpire’s tablet and some “beauty shots” offering outside images of the Flushing Meadow venue.
The unit running ViBox courts has been created independently from the main ESPN Broadcast Center, as it had to be operational a week earlier to air qualifying matches. This technology allows ESPN to offer 130 hour of live TV coverage of this US Open and an extra 1300 hours of streaming coverage through the ESPN app, the streaming channel ESPN3 and the OTT solution ESPN+.
This solution required 2 and a half year of development to be perfected and represent a significant leap forward in the way tennis tournaments can be covered. It’s not unlikely that many other tournaments will adopt the same technology to reduce their cost base and provide quality TV coverage of more and more matches throughout the season.