ESPN has dropped the ball when it has come to their tennis coverage this year and the tennis world is starting to take exception to how their sport is being handled by the biggest cable network in the United States.
Earlier this summer ESPN announced that they would drop their coverage of the French Open because they are the second or third TV outlet to cover the Grand Slam. ESPN claims it has nothing to do with money despite them making other financial cuts such as getting rid of big profiled names. The other channels that cover French Open are the Tennis Channel and NBC. They claim that shows First Take and Mike & Mike will generate more viewers despite many sports fans getting sick of the repetitive nature of such shows. (For an excellent explanation of ESPN’s current potential financial stresses, see here.
ESPN Lacks Commitment to Tennis Coverage
The thing that ESPN does not take in to account is that many people do not have the Tennis Channel because it is expensive to get and NBC typically shows mostly action on the weekend and often shows matches after they are completed. It will now be much harder for people to watch live coverage of the French Open especially if they are not on the east coast.
ESPN has also ran into problems with their coverage of the Citi Open this year despite the tournament’s attendance, sponsorship and viewership being up. Last year ESPN broadcast eight hours of the tournament live and this year ESPN only offered to broadcast one men’s semifinal and the men’s final on television with the rest being on their streaming service.
When ESPN refused to offer much more coverage the Tennis Channel picked it up and offered 170 hours of coverage and a lot of local marketing. Donald Dell, the co-founder of the Washington, D.C. tournament was happy that the Tennis Channel was willing to pick up the tournament but it was obvious it was perturbed by ESPN.
When ESPN shows tennis on its streaming services and not on one of their network,s many of the feeds do not have commentators despite ESPN having a slew of commentators under contract. The feeds also tend to be 20-30 seconds behind live tennis and have a tendency to run in to a lot of technical difficulties.
When it debuted, ESPN3 was a tremendous boon to tennis fans. It added the ability to watch even more live matches to already-sufficient live coverage on television. Now, though, it is rapidly becoming a place for ESPN to just put up a camera and consider their job of showing live tennis filled.
On top of that if you watch SportsCenter it is very unlikely you will see many highlights or scores scrolling along the bottom. During the Rogers Cup and Western & Southern Open, the only tennis news that was scrolling on the SportsCenter was about Serena William going for the calendar Grand Slam. When they do show highlights it is evident that most of their anchors do not know much about the sport and the network has done very little to educate their anchors.
To top it all off there was an article on August 5th in Fortune about how ESPN wants to go to their own version of HBO Now and Disney’s CEO Bob Iger believe people would be wiling to pay the fee. Igner was quoted in the article by saying “We could do it today.. and I guarantee there would be enough people willing to pay.” However if it does come to that he should expect a lot of tennis fans to opt for the Tennis Channel where they can get comprehensive coverage instead of ESPN’s watered down treatment of their beloved sport.
There will be a lot less room for error for ESPN at this year’s US Open as it is the first year they have exclusive rights to the tournament. It will mainly be shown on ESPN 2 and they will also offer steaming for television courts. The big concern is that ESPN will show blow out matches because they include big names like Roger Federer or Serena Williams instead of showing a close five set match that might include a rising star.
ESPN purchase of US Open (+US Open Series) resulted in MUCH less tennis on actual TV this year. Even 11am-1pm during #USOpen won't be on TV.
— Ben Rothenberg (@BenRothenberg) August 25, 2015
It is evident that ESPN and Disney is committed to talking a big game but isn’t actually committed to showing live sports because the price is too great. They would rather talk about the three same stories on repeat on all of their networks.
The responsibilities of a sports network towards its fans will always be a debated philosophical issue, but it should be clear that if a company buys up rights to a sport, it at the very least owes the fans not to decrease their access to coverage of their sport.
The way ESPN treats tennis is reminiscent of how they treated hockey and why they will likely not get the rights to National Hockey League games any time soon. It wouldn’t be surprising to see tennis eventually move to NBC and NBC Sports because tennis’ governing bodies get fed up with the lack of respect by ESPN.
The lack of quality tennis coverage is only the tip of a much bigger problem at ESPN which is their lack of interest in showing sports outside of the United States despite claiming to be the “Worldwide Leader” in sports.
Enjoy what you see? Check out all of our complete coverage of the 2015 US Open here.
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