Tennis Channel has French Open exclusive
March 14, 2016
LOS ANGELES – As it celebrates its 10th year of coverage from the grounds of Roland Garros (commonly known as the French Open) May 22-June 5, Tennis Channel will be the sole cable, satellite and telco provider of on-air matches during tennis’ most prestigious clay-court competition, and its greatest digital provider. Approximately 80 percent of all live, televised French Open competition will be exclusive to the network as it adds match blocks that it had sublicensed for the first nine years of its rights agreement with the tournament, one of the sport’s four majors; an agreement in effect through 2023.
The new lineup of matches exclusive to Tennis Channel includes a singles semifinal for both the men and women (with the second women’s semifinal shared with a broadcast partner); all men’s and women’s singles quarterfinals; and the mixed-doubles finals. The network will have live coverage for 13 of the competition’s 15 days, and be the only place for French Open coverage during half of them. The channel’s live hours of match play will expand by close to 50 hours, from around 65 in 2015 to close to 110 this spring. In all, Tennis Channel will devote approximately 315 hours of mostly round-the-clock airtime to Roland Garros during the two-week event, which does not include preview shows and additional match encores in the respective weeks before and after the tournament
“Tennis Channel’s partnership with Roland Garros, our first major, has evolved to the point where this year we’ll be the streamlined on-air and online place to find the bulk of the competition,” said Ken Solomon, president, Tennis Channel. “This is a significant initiative for our network: this year’s Paris coverage will offer more live hours, outer-court encores, nightly replays and a schedule with complete 24-hour coverage on majority of the fortnight. Roland Garros is in the process of expanding, with new facilities, widened tournament grounds, increased TV-court access and other updated amenities. We’re in this for the long term and are scaling our coverage right there with them.”
More than the sheer volume of its live coverage this spring, Tennis Channel’s 24-hour dedication to the French Open will further ingrain the network as the tournament’s two-week, “always on” television home. With few exceptions, when live play concludes each evening in Paris, the channel will televise encore replays of the day’s most exciting events throughout the night, up to the start of the next morning’s coverage. For U.S. viewers on the East Coast this will mean a chance to restart each day’s tournament action in the late afternoon and follow the matches through primetime into the late night and early morning.
With the addition of nine new robotic-production camera courts on top of Roland Garros’ seven television courts, Tennis Channel will also provide viewers with more complete coverage than ever in Roland Garros history. This will carry over to digital-subscription service Tennis Channel Plus as well, which will offer an additional 360 hours of matches at Roland Garros this year, available to everyone regardless of whether they subscribe to the television network. Using phones, tablets, computers or Apple TV, Roku TV and Amazon Fire, users will have the option of choosing from the wide variety of simultaneous matches that take place at the French Open, a service only available through Tennis Channel.
Tennis Channel’s on-air team at Roland Garros in 2016 will again feature Hall of Famers Martina Navratilova (@Martina), Jim Courier and Lindsay Davenport (@LDavenport76) as well as sportscasters Bill Macatee (@Bmacatee), Mary Carillo and Ted Robinson (@tedjrobinson), and many others. Members of one of the most accomplished rosters in sports television, they will share daylong insight and analysis from a set overlooking the tournament’s iconic Musketeer Plaza, and assess the event’s developments within the context of story arcs that unfold throughout the tennis year.
Tennis Channel’s complete daily schedule, on-air talent roster and digital offerings will be announced in May, on the eve of the tournament.
Tennis Channel (tennischannel.com) is the only 24-hour, television-based multimedia destination dedicated to both the professional sport and tennis lifestyle. A hybrid ofcomprehensive sports, health, fitness, pop culture, entertainment, lifestyle and travel programming, the network is home to every aspect of the wide-ranging, worldwide tennis community. It also has the most concentrated single-sport coverage in television, with telecast rights at the US Open, Wimbledon, Roland Garros (French Open), Australian Open, top-tier WTA competitions, Davis Cup, Fed Cup and Hopman Cup. Tennis Channel is carried by nine of the top 10 video providers.