Live Wimbledon Web Casts Coming To The Net

By Richard Pagliaro

Seven-time Wimbledon winner Pete Sampras called Centre Court at Wimbledon a "tennis cathedral" and now the most traditional tournament in tennis is partnering with Mediazone.com to create a welcome web site sanctuary for Wimbledon worshippers. For the first time in history, tennis fans will be able to watch Wimbledon matches via live streaming video and on-demand over the Internet through a link on the official Wimbledon web site.

For a full-tournament ticket fee that is expected to cost between $20-$25, tennis fans can watch live match coverage via the web from Centre Court, Court One and up to seven other courts throughout the Wimbledon fortnight. That all-access pass is expected to go on sale on or about June 14, though you can visit Wimbledon Live now and enter your email address to receive instant updates on the service.

In addition to live match coverage, Wimbledon Live will feature "On Demand video of recent and classic matches as well as match highlights, player interviews and news updates."

It is potentially the most exciting tennis technological innovation since the introduction of the Hawk-Eye replay system earlier this year — offering web casts using international television feeds that can take tennis fans so close to the courts at Wimbledon you can hear the subtle squeak of the strings tighten with tension as players' fingertips tickle the strings of their racquet faces. Wimbledon Live is a partnership between Wimbledon.org and the San Francisco-based MediaZone.com, which began web casting live tennis matches during the Tennis Masters Series Rome tournament earlier this month. Mediazone currently offers web visitors a special introductory annual subscription price of $99.99 for unlimited access to one year of its Tennis Channel tournament web coverage (Mediazone's Tennis Channel is unrelated to The Tennis Channel cable television network). This all-access pass provides viewers live and on demand web casts of more than 35 tournaments featuring 500 matches from ATP and WTA Tournaments. However, the Wimbledon tournament package will be a separate fee from Mediazone's current all-access pass of ATP and WTA tournament coverage.

Mediazone's director for content, David Yusem, who recently returned from a trip to the All England Club to finalize plans for Wimbledon Live, told Tennis Week the two-week tournament will be one of the largest sports web casts of its kind.

"The official Wimbledon site and Mediazone's site will be driving traffic toward it so we anticipate it will be one of the largest broadcasts of its kind ever — even larger than March Madness because tennis is a global game and Wimbledon commands so much attention," Yusem told Tennis Week. "We will be offering quite a few of the live feeds from international broadcasters. It is a pretty big undertaking and we're very excited to be involved. The All England Club and Wimbledon are always thought of as traditionalists, but in working with them we've found them to be very forward thinking."

Wimbledon Live will enable users to select the court and television feed they wish to view over the Internet. Plans are to offer a variety of pricing packages to allow users to pay for an all-access pass which would offer unlimited coverage throughout the fortnight or pay for specific days or matches during Wimbledon.

"We're picking up all the feeds we can contractually use and most courts will carry at least three matches per day so you'll be able to choose which feed you want to consume," Yusem said. "If you want to change the feed, it will be pretty user friendly so you will have the ability to leave one match and join another match in progress by changing the feeds. We're looking at future technology that will enable a user to actually have all nine fees open on their screen simultaneously, but we're not going to deploy that technology this year."

In the past, some immensely popular web casts such as the Victoria Secrets runway show webcast live from Manhattan last year, elicited such a great demand from users, servers have either crashed or stalled. In an effort to prevent the Information Superhighway from becoming as grid locked as the Grand Central Parkway during the U.S. Open, Wimbledon Live may limit the number of passes it sells for its Wimbledon coverage to ensure the integrity of its site. A restriction on passes sold could theoretically also help increase advance sales of the service.

"We're working on the scale and due to the current limitations on band width and capability to serve current licenses we may put a limit on the number of people who can consume Wimbledon Live," Yusem told Tennis Week. "If you're serving 100,000 concurrent streams it can take up massive bandwidths. We don't want excessive traffic to ruin the Wimbledon experience so we're considering limiting the sales."

Some tennis fans who have watched matches streamed over the Internet in the past, including the USTA's live web cast of the Pete Sampras-Robby Ginepri match in April, often cited ball visibility as a common complaint. For some fans, locating the ball on a small computer screen seemed as easy as separating a single strand of felt from the ball blazing by them off the strings of Andy Roddick's Babolat racquet. There were some issues with ball visibility and I believe the main reason for that was since we priced that for free we wrapped after its rocketed off Andy Roddick's racquet. Conceding ball visibility was an issue for viewers during Mediazone's debut from Rome, Yusem said the company is experimenting with bit rates that should alleviate the problem at Wimbledon.

"There were some issues with ball visibility in Rome and I believe the main reason for that was since we conducted that for free we wrapped that with advertising and that kept the stream minimized to a small, little box on user's screens, which did make the ball difficult to catch on a clay court," Yusem said. "I suspect we can address those issues by encoding at a higher bit rate, which may kind of alleviate any washed-out feeling in the screen as well. We will be learning very quickly and adjusting. After Rome, we then jumped into Hamburg and we had to hurry up and build the environment. As we continue to grow, we're building a much more user friendly environment that continues to grow. It looks pretty darn good and I think it's gonna continue to look even better."

Mediazone reports many of its current tournament web rights extend through the next two to three years and points to wireless technology that enables users to transmit their web streaming over their computer to their televisions as positive signs for fostering tennis' future growth through tournament web casts. Yusem envisions a future where tennis fans are not just passive spectators watching whatever television networks feed them, but active participants in directing their own tennis experience. Imagine a future in which you not only can choose the match you want to see live, but also directing multiple camera angles and audio feeds enabling you to watch Federer's serve or Nadal's return from behind the baseline or from a court-side camera or from a camera above the chair umpire. In that not-too-distant future, you may be able to watch Wimbledon matches streamed over the web and share comments, reactions and insight instantly with other fans all over the world. This global living room could potentially expand tennis' presence in households across the world without running the risk of a chair umpire admonishing "quite please."

"The beauty of the internet is it's not just providing a one-way push of information — the internet allows for disparate consumers passionate about the same sport or subject to connect with each other," Yusem said. "So what we will do is try to build a community moving forward, where consumers are in the same place — not in the stands together — but watching this tennis event together and sharing thoughts about this together in real time live. When we integrate a chat environment, then you've got a dialogue with fellow tennis fans all over the world. At some point, we really want to stream multiple feeds live, including cameras suspended from the air above the court, so then the consumer is really in control of their experience. That approach allows the consumer to become the director and choose which angle of shot they want. If we can build that type of community around the world then that would really differentiate us from the broadcast medium and we believe really help tennis grow. So we're very excited about the future and where it will take the tennis fan and tennis."