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.

BURLINGTON, Canada—Evertz has announced the acquisition of Norwegian-based Ease Live AS, which is now set to serve as a subsidiary of Evertz. Ease Live AS will be integrated into Evertz cloud production technology to offer live interactive graphics for live sports, live events and linear channel customers, the company announced.

Ease Live AS is an interactivity platform designed for use with OTT video services. With the Ease Live AS software-as-a-service technology platform and engineering team, Evertz will offer a cloud-based platform that aims to drive viewer personalization, engagement and interactive features, per the official press release.

“We [Ease Live AS] specialize in creating and distributing new content experiences,” said Kjetil Horneland, CEO of Ease Live AS. “Our interactive TV graphics platform enables connected devices to become interactive and personalized—all in the hands of the end users. It’s all about delivering better viewing experiences on top of what has already been invested in OTT.”

“Digital has become the priority for our entertainment, sports and news customers, so we are excited to bring interactive graphics to the edge,” said Romolo Magarelli, CEO, Evertz.

For more information, visit www.evertz.com.  

BERGEN, NORWAY—Sixty, a TV experience company based in Norway, has announced that its recently released Ease Live interactive graphics system can integrate with Vizrt’s Viz Artist and Viz Trio systems for online and broadcast graphics.

Ease Live allows broadcasters to send interactive, clickable on-air graphics, highlights, statistics and more to tablets directly from broadcasters’ graphics systems. Now, it can also integrate with Viz Artist and Viz Trio to send graphics to end viewers while minimizing resource requirements within existing distribution flows.

The Ease Live also includes integration with existing sports graphic applications and the design of customized sports graphics applications.