LONDON—NEP Europe has announced a new multi-year agreement with Wimbledon Broadcast Services (WBS) to remain the broadcast services provider and detailed how it used a number of innovative technologies to produce The Championships, Wimbledon 2026, which continues at the All England Lawn Tennis Club through Sunday, July 12.

"What makes this relationship successful is a shared commitment to continually improving how The Championships is delivered," said Ed Tischler, managing director, NEP UK. "Working alongside WBS, we've evolved the host broadcast operation by finding smarter ways to work, embracing new technologies and giving both teams greater flexibility to innovate. This new agreement reflects the trust we've built together and, most importantly, the commitment of our people who continue to push the operation forward every year."

"Our focus is always on delivering the highest-quality coverage of The Championships for rightsholders around the world while continuing to evolve how the event is produced," added Paul Davies, associate director of broadcast, production, and media rights at The All England Lawn Tennis Club. "NEP has worked in close collaboration with our team to refine workflows, adopt new technologies and continually improve our production approach. That shared commitment to innovation has strengthened the host broadcast operation and provides a strong foundation as we continue to enhance coverage of The Championships in the years ahead."

In making the announcement, NEP also detailed a full range of technical services from across the content supply chain that are being used to deliver the broadcast feed to rightsholders around the world.

The 2026 deployment expanded the use of SMPTE ST 2110 infrastructure across The Championships grounds, with NEP's TFC broadcast control system serving as the central orchestration layer that coordinates workflows across the production. Together, they enable more agile production workflows, streamline replay operations and provide more efficient deployment of engineering and production resources.

Supporting the production are two IP-powered UHD HDR outside broadcast units, a large-scale IP flypack serving 11 production galleries and seven automated courts, and an integrated workflow featuring more than 150 cameras, 32 EVS replay servers, NEP's MediaBank media asset management solution, graphics, quality control and new video review capabilities. More than 350 engineering, operational and commercial specialists from NEP are supporting the delivery of The Championships, along with the Qualifying Competition at Roehampton.

Specialty cameras were also used to expand court coverage. NEP's AI-powered Tr-ACE robotic camera system provided automated capture across Courts 4–7 and 9–11 while enabling a single operator to manage complete on-court coverage. For the first time, Centre Court and No.1 Court also feature NEP's Nucleus camera system, delivering ultra-high-quality 4K super slow-motion images that bring fans even closer to the action.

In addition, Creative Technology (CT), NEP Group's live events solutions division, is delivering one of the largest visual technology deployments at The Championships, with 74 LED displays installed across multiple venues, including the iconic Henman Hill. CT also manages live content production for public viewing areas, helping create an engaging spectator experience throughout the grounds.

WIMBLEDON, U.K.—Video production company hsc.tv worked with Director of Photography Bryan TWZ Brousseau to create a unique lighting and set design for ESPN’s player interviews at Wimbledon during the two-week event taking place in the U.K.

“Under the direction of the ESPN features unit: Cathi Cappas, Kathryn Davidson, Lauren Collins, and Tessa Diestel we wanted to change the look this year to reflect the next generation of great players. So, we went with a modern LED lighting and set design look that would look great across the color schemes of Wimbledon, US Open and the Australian Open,” said Bryan TWZ Brousseau, Director of Photography. “I looked at a lot of different lights and chose the new Aputure Infinibars as the primary lights, as I wanted lights that could also look great on camera and the Infinibars look great!”

Brousseau selected the Infinibars based on their shape and CRI, as well as the fact that they’re mountable at every angle. The hsc.tv team performed many camera tests at various color temperatures against their backdrops and textures until they were satisfied with the final results. The team additionally used every size from the PB12’s to the PB3’s and mostly in the 3D configuration to create depth in the set and for their key lights up close and personal with the players.

The deep background was created by NYC artist Adam Mills and the wooden wallpaper was created by the company Arte in Belgium, discovered by ESPN Creative Producer Candace Jordan. hsc.tv rounded out the light package with Fotodiox Pro Flapjacks, Aputure Amarans150Cs, and LiteGear Litemats Plus4’s .

Pier de Sanctis, CEO of Hsc.tv said, “Bryan’s work at Wimbledon exemplifies our commitment to excellence and innovation. His ability to integrate cutting-edge technology with creative design ensures that every viewer feels the thrill and prestige of Wimbledon, particularly through the personal stories of the players.”

NEW YORK—Gravity Media Australia has inked a new deal with The All England Lawn Tennis Club for continued use of its “NetCam” for global coverage of The Championships, Wimbledon.

Under the agreement, the camera technology, which was designed and developed in Australia, will continue to be used next year. The deal builds on Gravity Media Australia’s deployment of NetCam at Wimbledon, which began with its Wimbledon debut in 2018, Gravity Media said.

“The use of NetCam on Centre and No. 1 Court brings a unique and dynamic perspective to the broadcast coverage during The Championships,” said Paul Davies, head of broadcast, production and media rights for The Championships, Wimbledon.

“The delicate challenge of integrating these cameras within the grass courts has always been sensitively managed between Gravity Media Australia and our ground staff, and we look forward continuing this long-standing partnership.”

The company’s NetCam has also played an integral role in covering the U.S. Open Tennis Championships and will again be used for next year’s coverage of the Australian Open Tennis Championships. It also is used for coverage of Grand Slams and ATP and WTA Finals, the company said.

Gravity Media’s NetCam features a dual UHD camera platform with two simultaneous 12G-SDI digital video transmission outputs—one from each camera. This allows both players to be filmed simultaneously, it said.

Mounted in the center strap of the net—just behind the white vertical adjustment strap, NetCam gives viewers an entirely new vantage point. The camera relies on a courtside fiber converter to transform incoming camera signals into an optical format, which can then be transported to a mobile control room or production truck, it said.

“Gravity Media Australia is pleased to be working in partnership with The All England Lawn Tennis Club and delivering our specialist camera technologies to add further depth and audience engagement for the internationally recognized global television coverage of The Championships,” said Greg Littrich, director of operations at Gravity Media Australia.

More information is available on the company’s website.

LONDON—Global production services and live video transmission company The Switch provided international connectivity and transmission for the 2023 Wimbledon Championships, supporting IMG Studios in the UK and the main international rightsholders, including ESPN, Tennis Channel and Stats Perform.

The Switch installed a dedicated private dark fiber ring into the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) in Wimbledon to deliver tournament feeds to IMG Studios at Stockley Park, West London, where all the production for coverage of the competition is handled. This dedicated network delivers 100-200Gb capacity, ensuring every live feed from every court at Wimbledon is delivered to fans seamlessly. The flexible fiber network ensured redundancy and allowed capacity to be spun up and down as needed, according to the company.

"Wimbledon is one of the most prestigious live events in tennis, and it was critical fans could enjoy every second of the action uninterrupted,” said George Lopez, Senior Vice President of Operations for The Switch. “This project brought together The Switch's long-standing heritage supporting major Grand Slams with our knowledge and expertise in delivering high-value sports content, which meant the main broadcast partners and rightsholders could rely on us to deliver bigger and better coverage. We're proud to play a central role in bringing this much-loved tournament to more fans than ever worldwide."

For Wimbledon, The Switch built its largest stadium Point of Presence (POP) to date, carrying all feeds from all 18 courts at Wimbledon, plus behind-the-scenes content and beauty shots.

As part of its digital offering for tennis fans, the All England Lawn Tennis Club will employ generative AI from IBM Watson to produce commentary for men’s and ladies’ singles matches featured on the app and Wimbledon.com.

The AI Commentary feature will provide fans watching match highlights videos with audio commentary of key moments, along with captions, which they can toggle on or off, said IBM.

The tool has been designed to give fans a more insightful experience when catching up on key moments from matches with highlights videos on the Wimbledon App and wimbledon.com.

Its introduction this year is a step towards making commentary available in an exciting way for matches outside of Wimbledon’s Show Courts, which already have live human commentary, added the company.

To develop the new feature, experts from IBM iX, the experience design partner within IBM Consulting, worked with The All England Club to leverage foundation models from watsonx, IBM’s enterprise AI and data platform, to train the AI in the unique language of tennis.

Generative AI built on the foundation models was applied to produce narration with varied sentence structure and vocabulary to make the clips informative and engaging, added IBM.

Usama Al-Qassab, marketing and commercial director, The All England Club, said: “We are constantly innovating with our partners at IBM to provide Wimbledon fans, wherever they are in the world, with an insightful and engaging digital experience of The Championships. This year, we’re introducing new features for our digital platforms that use the latest AI technology from IBM to help fans gain even more insight into the singles draw and access commentary on a wider variety of matches through our match highlights videos.”

By the looks of how the PGA experimented with AI generated commentary earlier this year one Twitter follower believes it still needs some work before it's ready for prime time.

This article originally appeared on TVBEurope.

LONDON—NEP UK has inked a deal to extend its broadcast services partnership with the All England Lawn Tennis Club supporting broadcast delivery of the Wimbledon Championship for four years, the company said.

Having provided host coverage of the tennis championship since 2014, NEP worked with Wimbledon Broadcast Services this year to broadcast every match across all 18 courts for the first time. The coverage included center court shots in UHD High Dynamic Range (HDR).

Eleven of the courts at Wimbledon were crewed by camera operators and seven used a hybrid of operators and NEP’s Tr-Ace system. Coverage of this year’s event, June 27-July 10, was the first time the event has been held over 14 days with Middle Sunday now a permanent feature in the schedule. Broadcast coverage was provided by NEP UK using fully redundant IP technology, NEP said.

NEP UK also provided both host and unilateral coverage to the BBC and other broadcasters for Wimbledon, it said.

Working closely with the All England Club, NEP UK deployed more than 100 camera positions and 40 EVS servers to record and replay every ball played, producing coverage of every court. The feeds were then distributed by NEP to all RHB onsite, and passed to IMG, EBU and other rights-holding broadcasters around the world, it said.

Sony 3500 cameras were used to capture all of the action live in UHD from the courts. All courts were delivered in 1080 SDR 709 with center court also available in UHD HDR 2020 to deliver the optimum broadcast quality experience for fans at home. NEP’s Venus and Ceres units were used on Center and No.1 Court.

Fletcher Group’s Tr-ACE system ensured that the robotic camera heads can track all the action on the court. The Tr-ACE system uses a mixture of image recognition and LIDAR technologies to track players, which enables one operator to control all of the cameras as well as mix the show at the same time, it said.

With Tr-ACE technology, an operator simply taps the person of interest on the screen and then select whether a wide, mid or close-up shot of the player is desirable. Once done, pan, tilt, zoom and focus functions are all automatic, it said.

NEP sister company Creative Technology was onsite during the event running full audio RF operations. Staff used talkback, in-ear monitors and radio mic coverage across the 14-acre site to ensure smooth production. Creative Technology also ran the screens operating across Wimbledon, including all scoreboards on court and around the campus and screens for the Queue and The Hill, it said.

“NEP UK are all incredibly proud of our long and successful partnership with the All England Club in delivering The Championships," said Simon Moorhead, managing director of NEP UK Broadcast Services, NEP UK. "This is one of the most prestigious sporting events in the world—[one] that has the eyes of the world watching. Our partnership completely transcends the pure provision of technical broadcast equipment and services. It is about our proven, collective understanding and collaboration in the pursuit of quality in all parts of the process, and our absolute commitment to provide a rock-solid operation, with agility and flexibility, whilst continuously innovating and improving,” 

More information is available on the company’s website. 

LONDON—The 2021 Wimbledon Championships marked the biggest deployment to date on tournament grounds of Riedel signal transport, processing and intercom technology, the company announced today.

The All-England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club (AELTC) installed a fixed signal routing and communications network based on Riedel’s MediorNet real-time signal transport and processing technology and Artist digital matrix intercom mainframe.

AELTC has relied on Riedel for more than 10 years and expanded its Riedel infrastructure for this year’s tournament, Riedel said.

For Wimbledon 2021, held June 28-July 11 at the All England Lawn Tennis Club, the MediorNet/Artist solution facilitated remote audio mixing to support communications between review officials and umpires, statisticians, safety, security, audio and production teams as well as video feeds to aid the audio team with press feed distribution and remote operation of all courts, it said.

While the basic network remains in place year-round at AELTC, Riedel Managed Technology was brought in to supply the additional panels, nodes and other gear necessary to support tournament play at 18 different courts over the 14 days of Wimbledon.

"Wimbledon is steeped in tradition, but we're certainly not standing still. We're always looking to stay on the edge of technology and apply the latest innovations to make the Championships the best they can possibly be," said AELTC audio and communications specialist James Henry “Brew” Breward.

"We know we can count on Riedel equipment to provide seamless, reliable communications with fantastic sound quality when it really matters, such as when resolving debatable review calls," he added. "And with all of the additional equipment that comes in quickly for the Championships, we absolutely depend on Riedel's Managed Technology division to help us meet our tight timeframes.”

The permanent Riedel installation at AELTC consists of an Artist-64 intercom node and a handful of 2300 SmartPanels. Prior to the tournament, the Riedel Managed Technology division expanded the fixed infrastructure with an array of additional Artist and MediorNet equipment, including MediorNet MicroN high-density media distribution network devices, around 120 intercom panels, and Bolero, offering coverage over much of the grounds, the company said.

With their ability to be deployed in unlimited configurations, the modular MicroNs came in handy particularly in the AELTC master control room where the signals from the 18 courts, big screen production and countless local mixes come together, it said.

Additional MicroNs configured with the Riedel MultiViewer App were located in the Center Court PA rack room. This enabled the production crew in master control to mix audio signals from up to 36 SDI broadcast and MADI feeds from Artist, house audio, OB comms 4-wires, and program feeds.

LONDON—The 134th Wimbledon tennis tournament will have to wait a year, as the All England Club (AELTC) and the Committee of Management of The Championships have announced that they are cancelling the 2020 Wimbledon tournament because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Wimbledon, one of professional tennis’ four major tournaments, was scheduled to take place from June 29-July 12 this year. Now, the 134th edition of the tournament will take place from June 28-July 11, 2021.

“Uppermost in our mind has been the health and safety of all those who come together to make Wimbledon happen—the public in the U.K. and visitors from around the world, our players, guests, members, staff, volunteers, partners, contractors and local residents—as well as our broader responsibility to society’s efforts to tackle this global challenge to our way of life,” read the official announcement.

Preparations for the tournament were supposed to begin in April, but the AELTC says that because of government restrictions they would not be able to properly prepare the tournament for a date in 2020.

The French Open tennis tournament, another of the four majors, had previously announced that it was delaying its tournament from its May dates to September. 

ESPN was scheduled to broadcast Wimbledon 2020. The French Open will be broadcast on NBC.

Other major sporting events, including the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, the NBA and NHL regular and postseaons, MLB opening day and more have also postponed or cancelled because of the coronavirus. 

Many broadcasters and production companies, like NEP, have been impacted by these postponements. 

HEBDEN BRIDGE, U.K.—NEP U.K. deployed 15 Calrec consoles, networking, routing tech and I/O boxes for Wimbledon 2019 coverage, the company said today.

Three more Calrec consoles—one each for coverage of Centre Court, Court One and Court Two—were used in NEP outside broadcast trucks covering the tournament.

“We have worked extensively with Calrec over the years,” said NEP Broadcast Services sound engineer Jimmy Parkin. “The networking flexibility and easy scalability of their technology were central to the success of this Wimbledon 2019 project.”

Wimbledon Broadcast Services (WBS) served as host broadcaster for the second year. An IP video network was deployed using SMPTE ST 2110. The Calrec consoles were connected to the host broadcast network.

Ten Calrec Summa and one Brio console, including consoles for the Wimbledon Channel and the media center, were deployed. NEP also worked with a major U.S. broadcaster for coverage, including streaming, using an additional three Calrec consoles—two Artemis and one Brio—in the network’s three control rooms.

“We needed audio operators to be able to easily access any source from any court without having to move anything or plug anything in; any console can ‘talk’ with any other console on the network,” said Parkin.

“We also needed to integrate IP networks with Calrec’s Hydra 2 networking technology and using their interfaces made this very easy. Pre-event offsite planning, using Calrec’s H2O GUI for the Hydra 2network, meant that we could accurately name and label ports before any hardware was connected.”

The entire Calrec deployment “worked seamlessly,” with resources appearing on the network and then being able to be moved across the network effortlessly, he added.

LONDON—BBC’s coverage of Wimbledon this year is providing viewers something they have not seen before, a series of in-studio augmented reality displays courtesy of sport and event graphics company MOOV.

Based around a three-camera setup (two pedestals and one jib), MOOV is using RT Software’s AR technology and StarTracker camera tracking technology from Mo-Sys to produce the AR graphics. The Mo-Sys system is an optical tracking system that enables studio cameras to be moved when overlaying augmented graphics.

The AR technology provides enhanced graphics not possible in a traditional studio, including virtual life-size cutouts of players on glass plinths and a virtual “Magic Window” that looks onto a 3D render of a tennis court to show results and match data laid out on the court surface.

Each camera feed is passed through RT’s render engine, which drives both the player cutouts and the Magic Window in real time.

LONDON--The SMPTE ST 2110 suite of IP standards for professional media production made its mark last month on Wimbledon when NEP UK put to use an IP infrastructure centered on Grass Valley technology for the first UHD HDR live production of the tennis championship.

NEP UK deployed two SMPTE ST 2110 trucks, Venus and Ceres, for production of the 2018 Wimbledon Tennis Championship for host broadcaster Wimbledon Broadcast Services (WBS).

The setup included multicamera production of all 18 courts, a first for Wimbledon coverage. The camera complement included a net-cam on both Center Court and No. 1 Court as well as other production enhancements.

NEP UK’s Venus and Ceres OB trucks were responsible for HD, HDR and UHD content, delivering world feeds to 20 onsite broadcasters as well as 21 of its own production galleries. A portable IP flyaway system was used to connect the two trucks, forming one of the world’s largest SMPTE ST 2110 OB installations to date. Together they were able to handle more than 118 camera signals. The Grass Valley IP infrastructure handled movement of streams with far less cabling than the miles that would have been needed for a similar baseband setup, Grass Valley said.

The IP infrastructure was built around Grass Valley IQ UCP 25GbE gateway cards. The modular, reprogrammable cards provide bi-directional interfacing between IP and baseband equipment. Each truck is equipped with 70 of the cards, and flyaways have 200. This flexibility makes it easy for NEP to adapt to the specific requirements of any particular event or venue, Grass Valley said.

The trucks, which also were deployed to cover the royal wedding in May, include Grass Valley’s IPEDGE-SVR turnkey IP routing control system with Orbit control and monitoring software, Grass Valley Kayenne and Kahuna video switchers and IP multiviewers. These seamlessly integrate with Arista COTS network switches, AXON Digital Design master control systems, Calrec audio mixing capability and comms facilities from Telex Communications.

“As the Wimbledon 2018 project illustrates, we came together with Grass Valley to create a highly customizable live production capability that delivered high-quality action with unmatched images,” said Rob Newton, CTO of NEP UK and Ireland.

More information is available on the Grass Valley website. 

LONDON--NEP UK is making this year's Wimbledon the first Championships to be broadcast utilising SMPTE ST 2110 compliant fully redundant IP technology.

The company has installed a distributed routing system, connected by main and back up MTP fibre optic cable, to serve on and off-site domestic and international broadcasters.

NEP UK has been working with Wimbledon for 35 years, and this year is delivering IP technical facilities for its in-house production as part of Wimbledon Broadcast Services

Read: BBC To Stream Wimbledon 2018 Tennis Tournament In 4K/HDR]

Since 2014, NEP UK has provided both host and domestic coverage of the event. This year, it is providing 21 control rooms for the host broadcaster plus three for the Wimbledon Channel to serve the World Feed and archive. To support the broadcast, NEP is employing 118+ camera positions and 41+ EVS servers, plus three major OB units and a large fly-pack core to broadcast the event.

“Both the scale and range of requirements for this project are immense, from distributing directly to rights holders own MCRs, the Central Content Store, the World feed, the Wimbledon Channel and now a transmission, distribution and quality control area, as well as an additional two courts. We have also joined forces with Fletcher to provide coverage for the remaining seven courts, allowing all courts to have full coverage for the first time” said Richard Lancaster, technical project manager, NEP UK.

Paul Davies, head of broadcast and production at the AELTC added, “We have worked with NEP UK for a number of years and their experience, knowledge and expertise has ensured that Wimbledon has remained at the cutting edge of broadcast innovation throughout this partnership. This is the first year Wimbledon Broadcast Services comes into operation and we are delighted to continue to partner with NEP for a further four years and are very excited to be covering Centre Court in 4K HDR”

LONDON — During the upcoming Wimbledon 2018 Championships — taking place from July 2–15 at the All England Club in Wimbledon, London — the BBC plans to stream select tennis matches in 4K resolution picture quality with high dynamic range (HDR) color. The live and on-demand 4K/HDR streams will be accessible to most U.K. viewers watching the matches via the BBC’s iPlayer streaming service.

When 4K, with four times the pixel count of 1080/60p video, is combined with HDR color space — where millions more colors can be displayed — the results are a brighter, sharper image. Viewers can better discern whether a shot was in or out or recognize famous people in the crowd. And HDR-capable displays handle contrast better, revealing more detail in late-day shadows, while preventing exposure problems in sunlit areas.

As was the case with its recent World Cup Games technology trial, the BBC intends to limit the 4K/HDR service — to roughly the first tens of thousands of people who access the streams — to better manage the bigger bandwidth demands.

“The World Cup streams have suffered a few technical teething problems — stuttering and buffering with some devices,” said John Archer, a TV reviewer for Forbes and Techradar. “[There have also been] a few issues with adapting effectively to broadband speeds that are close to the BBC’ 40 Mbps and 20 Mbps streaming quality ‘tiers.’ When the streams have worked well, though, the results have been spectacular.”

According to a spokesman for the BBC, “The trial has given us valuable feedback allowing us to improve our systems.” And reportedly, few, if any, people found themselves blocked from accessing the World Cup games in 4K.

[Read here about how the BBC used IBM Watson for real-time data analytics of match highlights during last year’s Wimbledon]

TV Reviewer Archer added, “Detail and sharpness have been hugely superior to the HD broadcast streams, making the action feel more immediate and much less tiring to watch. The use of HDR has been quite subtle by comparison but has still undoubtedly enhanced the sense of 'being there' that's so important when you're watching sport.”

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