With wire-to-wire US Open coverage, ESPN’s big serve continues to score an ace
– Scott Guglielmino
NEW YORK – ESPN first aired tennis just one week after launch – the U.S. versus Argentina in Davis Cup play from Memphis on Sept. 14, 1979 (with Cliff Drysdale on the call, as he has been ever since!).
The focus of ESPN’s television programming strategy has evolved over time from quantity and variety to deeper coverage of the most popular sports with an emphasis on championship events. As recently as 2001, ESPN only aired matches from one of the sport’s four major championships, the Australian Open, which ESPN has aired from start to finish since 1984.
With a focus on “championship events” as the cornerstone of its tennis portfolio for television, in 2003 ESPN acquired a large portion of Wimbledon, and made it exclusive in 2012. Mirroring that process, the US Open was added in 2009 and after six years sharing the event with CBS and Tennis Channel, it’s all ESPN starting today. Daylong coverage from New York continues every day to the women’s and men’s championships Sept. 12 and 13.
ESPN today has the unprecedented position of complete coverage for three of the four Majors, from first ball to the trophies. It’s a position Senior Vice President, Programming and Global X, Scott Guglielmino believes delivers on our mission to serve fans.
“In Australia and Wimbledon, we’ve got the model right, and we’re excited about the opportunity to apply that same immersive first ball-to-last ball approach to the US Open,” he says. “Having exclusive rights to iconic events is important. It provides our production team, led by [Vice President, Production] Jamie Reynolds, the time and space they need to cover these world class sporting events from start to finish documenting the competitions and telling the stories as 256 athletes compete over two weeks to produce two champions.”
ESPN’s position in the sport is further buttressed by long-term agreements to televise a number of the next-level of events of most interest to a U.S. audience. Notably, these include the combined ATP/WTA tournaments in Indian Wells, Calif. and Miami in the spring, summer’s US Open Series highlighted by combined events in Canada and Cincinnati, and the year-end WTA and ATP Championships.
For the last six years, ESPN could lay claim to the moniker “Grand Slam Network,” thanks to coverage of the French Open. But ESPN’s role in Paris – the third of three U.S. television packages – didn’t fit with the preferred exclusive approach for tennis majors for the U.S. market.
“ESPN will continue to be an important French Open television partner overseas,” Guglielmino explains. “This year, ESPN International aired over 150 live hours from the French Open to more than 50 countries in Spanish-speaking Latin America and the Caribbean. In addition to ESPN International’s broadband service, ESPN Play, streamed over 500 live hours, including the men’s and women’s finals. It was a simply a strategic decision to walk away from domestic coverage.”
ESPN will continue to embrace technology in an effort to bring immersive coverage of sports to fans around the world across an array of platforms and devices.
