LONDON, BERGEN, Norway, NEW YORK and BURLINGTON, Canada—ATP Media, the global media and distribution arm of professional tennis' ATP Tour, has entered into a multi-year strategic partnership with Play Anywhere for interactive tennis graphics.

“We are honored to partner with ATP Media to bring enhanced consumer experiences to viewers while ensuring that all parties in the value chain are remunerated, helping to expand the Play Anywhere ecosystem as a global standard," said Yaacov Ben-Yaacov, CEO of Play Anywhere.

The agreement establishes Play Anywhere as the exclusive provider of contextual and monetizable interactive experiences across all of ATP Media’s broadcast and streaming distribution worldwide.

Based on Play Anywhere’s interactive rights framework, the partnership enables ATP Media to provide engaging interactive experiences powered by official data from Tennis Data Innovations (TDI) to fans worldwide while ensuring that production quality is preserved through the Play Anywhere compliance platform. The system includes the front-end television-quality interactive graphics engine of Evertz-owned Ease Live, Evertz said.

Play Anywhere will be offered to ATP Media’s worldwide broadcast partners and launched via its direct-to-consumer streaming service Tennis TV, across both linear and digital distribution.

“Our collaboration with ATP Media and Play Anywhere will revolutionize the tennis fan experience globally,” said Kjetil Horneland, CEO of Ease Live. “Our interactive graphics platform integrates seamlessly with existing broadcast and sports data workflows, giving ATP Media the scalability to engage audiences worldwide. By delivering interactive overlays across the screens, we help ATP Media foster deeper connections with fans and open new avenues for monetization automated by Play Anywhere."

The partnership follows Play Anywhere’s launches with LALIGA and at the Paris 2024 Olympics. Play Anywhere’s LALIGA launch has engaged sports fans around the world, and its Olympics interactivity was enjoyed by viewers in over a dozen countries across more than 30 sports. This partnership with ATP Media further cements Play Anywhere’s position as the leader in interactivity compliance and monetization, Evertz said.

“We are very excited to partner with Play Anywhere and Ease Live. We are impressed with their best-of-breed interactivity, their field-tested and cutting-edge clearinghouse platform, and their creative approach to identifying new revenue streams for content owners, rightsholders and other participating stakeholders in the sports broadcast and streaming ecosystem, while always ensuring that we can control the production quality through their unique compliance platform,” said ATP Media CEO Mark Webster.

More information is available on the company’s website.

Mobile production company Gravity Media has signed a long-term contract with ATP Media, the media arm of the ATP Tour, to deliver global coverage of over 60 of the ATP Tour’s world-renowned tennis tournaments including the ATP Masters 1000s, ATP 500s, ATP 250s and the season-ending Nitto ATP Finals.  

The companies term the new deal as “the beginning of a new and exciting next chapter” to “deliver a new approach to the production of tennis across the world.” As part of this new approach, ATP Media has worked closely with Gravity Media on the specification of the  galleries and working areas for ATP Media Studios, which will be based at Gravity Media’s brand-new  Production Centre in London, White City which opened earlier this year.  

The 50,000 square foot ATP Media Studios is part of the newly commissioned Gravity Media facility housed  in The Westworks precinct, and features production, post-production and live studio capabilities coupled with best-in-class technology  to support both on-premise and distributed remote production workflows. 

Gravity Media’s state-of-the-art facility is based around a fully-fledged 2110 IP media fabric. ATP Media Studios will comprise two large production and sound control rooms for the ATP Masters 1000 tournaments,  two medium production and sound control rooms for the ATP 500s and a dedicated area to produce the 38 ATP 250 events as well as seven flexible control rooms, six craft edit suites, six voiceover booths, a vision  control room, EVS room as well as a dedicated office space, broadcast operations centre and media management facilities. 

To deliver new production outcomes for ATP Media, the partnership with Gravity Media also involves building  an innovative and bespoke outside broadcast truck solution which is integrated natively with ATP Media  Studios. This solution allows ATP Media to ensure the migration of broadcast feeds from onsite to ATP  Media Studios at Gravity Media’s Production Centre in London (White City)—beginning initially with remote  world feed management through to remoting replay operators, vision control and media management, and  then scaling to fully remote court production.  

At each ATP Masters 1000 tournament, ATP Media is also introducing new camera positions and increasing  the number of both on-court and off-court cameras, and will access specialist, robotic and on-court camera  technologies designed and developed by Gravity Media’s specialist camera team to enhance the overall  viewer experience.  

As part of the new agreement, Gravity Media and ATP Media will deploy Sony HDC series camera channels, EVS XT Via servers and Calrec audio core and consoles worldwide and at ATP Media Studios at the Gravity Media Production Centre in London. Further technology upgrades will also be rolled out as part of this new partnership with ATP Media and  Gravity Media committed to further enhancing television production values.  

ATP Media and Gravity Media said the new production solutions are designed to promote a greener and environmentally sustainable approach to coverage of the ATP Tour—an approach  that significantly the companies said increases efficiencies and reduces production freight and logistics undertakings.

The first tournament under the new agreement goes live from ATP Media Studios at the Gravity Media  Production Centre in London in June. 

“It is an extremely proud moment for me and the wider team, as we announce our long term production  partnership, delivering ATP Media’s global broadcast and creative technology innovation solutions—building  on an already long-standing relationship, said John Newton, Gravity Media’s CEO and Founder. “Ensuring we will deliver the most advanced remote broadcast solutions across the ATP Media assets as  well as from our brand-new media hub, Production Centre London means we are poised to lead the way in  the future of tennis broadcasts. 

“This contract will ensure the most environmentally sustainable approaches are embraced, whilst ensuring  we can provide more roles to the broadcast industry welcoming and encouraging a new generation of talent  to come on board with both Gravity Media and ATP Media,” Newton added. 

“Gravity Media has been an important strategic partner for ATP Media over an extended period of time and so when Gravity Media stepped up to the plate with its bid under our very detailed and transparent tender  process, we were naturally delighted, said ATP Media CEO Mark Webster.  "ATP Media has been acutely aware that, to ensure it continues to be at the forefront of live and non-live  sports content production, it needs to continually re-invest in its production capabilities. 

"With the unfortunate  Covid-19 pandemic, such re-investment naturally had to be put on hold, but the tender process addressed  that and this innovative and wide ranging deal with Gravity Media, an organization ATP Media has implicity trusted for many years, will now turbo-charge our production and take ATP Tour tennis to the next level for  its fans,” Webster added. 

LONDON—Tennis fans in the U.K. and Republic of Ireland who are Amazon Prime members will be able to watch ATP World Tour events live and on-demand beginning in 2019, according to an announcement from ATP and ATP Media.

The deal with Amazon Prime Video includes the rights to 37 ATP World Tour Events through 2022. A separate deal provides for the availability of Tennis TV on Amazon Channels in the United States.

Aside from Tennis TV, Amazon has secured exclusive rights to all ATP World Tour Masters 1000s, 12 of each of the 500s and 250s and the Next Gen ATP Finals. Amazon will also be ATP’s exclusive third-party pay-TV partner for the season-ending Nitto ATP Finals at The O2 in London, the Queen’s Club Championships and the Eastbourne International.

As relates to the Queen’s Club Championships and the Eastbourne International, the deal begins in 2018, according to the announcement.

Subscribers also can access completed matches, highlights, tournament review shows, press conferences and additional original content on demand.

Amazon and ATP Media also have reached an agreement to distribute Tennis TV, ATP Media’s direct-to-consumer streaming service, to Prime members in the United States beginning next year on a non-exclusive basis.

The deal will bring more than 2,000 live matches from the ATP World Tour as well as on-demand content to Prime members via Amazon Channels.

“Our agreement with Amazon allows us to open up a digital space that is only becoming increasingly important in the world of sport and entertainment,” said Chris Kermode, ATP executive chairman and president in the press release.