Wimbledon 2023: ESPN airs on-court interviews and commits to ‘bigger, better, bolder’ coverage

Wimbledon 2023: Jamie Reynolds, left, in the ESPN gallery

ESPN is set to increase its presence at Wimbledon and build on its already extensive coverage of the annual tennis tournament, amid strong viewership in the US for the 2023 edition of the Championships.

ESPN’s overall linear tournament viewing figures were higher than last year’s, with a 7 per cent increase in viewers across ABC, ESPN and ESPN2, while this year’s tournament was the most-watched tennis tournament on ESPN+ to date.

Against that backdrop of some healthy viewing figures, ESPN and the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) are about to embark on a major refurbishment of the facilities used by ESPN to produce its coverage of the tournament.

AELTC head of broadcast, production and media rights Paul Davies said: “We have a new deal with ESPN from next year for 12 years…they’ve shown a huge commitment to us, and our gesture to them is that we’re going to provide a world-class, state-of-the-art production facility.”

ESPN VP production Jamie Reynolds added: “The commitment to making this whole thing bigger, better and bolder has been a long-range plan between us, the club and all their partners.”

Live from Wimbledon 2023:

• Wimbledon Broadcast Services’ Paul Davies on mic’ing up players and boosting behind the scenes access
• Upping UHD-HDR coverage of the Championships
• New production partner Whisper serves up expanded Wimbledon coverage
• ACS delivers more behind the scenes shots
• Moov creates virtual set for Wimbledon Broadcast Services 

The refurbished facilities work will allow ESPN, which this year had some 125 people on-site at Wimbledon and delivered more than 285 hours of live coverage across its ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Deportes and ABC channels, to operate from a single, bespoke area.

“To be able to keep the intelligence and the workforce in phase with each other, as opposed to running down the hall or going upstairs or downstairs to a lot of different, spread out workspaces, is a huge benefit,” said Reynolds.

“So, the consolidation is a benefit, just to help us react smarter, upgrade the technology and infrastructure that’s here so we can be a little more nimble and probably a little bit more sophisticated in our presentation and really turn this into an updated, upgraded facility.”

“We want to be able to ask the players about their warm up, to speak with them about their walk to the courts, ask them what the grass feels like, and just have that intimacy and a conversation with somebody in real-time.”

With one eye on the building work, ESPN’s technical approach this year was largely the same as 2022, says Reynolds, who spoke with SVG Europe during this year’s Championships.

“We didn’t prioritise much in the way of additional engineering ingredients to play with this year, because we knew that a lot is going to be stripped out over the course of the next year, and we’re going to rebuild a brand new facility.”

Mic’ing up players
However, something that was new for this year was the mic’ing up of players to allow ESPN’s commentary team to conduct interviews with players while they practiced during the tournament.

The use of audio to get closer to players was something of a theme of this year’s tournament, with host broadcaster WBS and production partner Whisper mic’ing up the likes of Andy Murray and his coach Ivan Lendl so Tim Henman could interview them while Henman played a practice match on Centre Court before the Championships for a pre-recorded package that was made available to broadcasters.

“We’ve been very progressive in wanting first-person voices,” says Reynolds. “We want to hear from the coaches, as well as the players, primarily. And I think with the success that golf has seen this spring [allowing commentators to speak directly with players], we’ve continued to push our approach to talking with players in a live scenario, and not just live to tape, and then putting together a nice little three minutes of Andy Murray and Ivan Lendl practising on Centre Court. That’s great content, and our audience loves that, but what if you could actually talk to Andy over at Aorangi, that would be great.

“We want to be able to ask the players about their warm up, to speak with them about their walk to the courts, ask them what the grass feels like, and just have that intimacy and a conversation with somebody in real-time.

“And it says to our viewers, ‘Hey, we’re talking these players right now, not just waiting for them in the Media Theatre. So that has been our focus coming into this event – how do we keep building a bridge to real-time sound?”

In order to realise their ambition of hearing live and direct from players, close cooperation with Wimbledon – and the players – was needed, says Reynolds.

“It really requires trust and confidence with the players that we’re not going to be a distraction, and that they see a benefit in helping to create a closer relationship with fans. And then technically, we’ve looked at the whole concept that if they’re walking to a court, working out or stretching, and they’ve got their earbuds in listening to music or on a FaceTime talking to somebody else, then effectively it’s the same thing. They’re just talking to somebody else, in a broadcast realm, that’s interested in what they’re focusing on today.”

From a technical perspective, that required earbuds networked to a Riedel Bolero antenna system, fed back to the broadcast centre.

Reynolds estimates that approximately ten interviews were conducted this way, including a conversation with US player Christopher Eubanks.

“A lot of folks were very excited about it, and when they start seeing others do it, it helped to create this groundswell of acceptability. It’s interesting, if you can listen to Max Verstappen or Lewis Hamilton speak to his team while racing at a hundred miles per hour, how intrusive is it to speak with someone when they’re warming up? So I think think all athletes are starting to recognise the value to them as well.”