Live From the 153rd Open Championship: EMG Debuts Spidercam for Golf, Expands Support for NBC Sports

Live From the 153rd Open Championship: EMG Debuts Spidercam for Golf, Expands Support for NBC Sports The production-services company is also supporting the world feed and Sky onsite and remotely By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director

Friday, July 18, 2025 - 8:59 am

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The 153rd Open Championship is underway at Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland, and topping the list of innovations is a first for any golf tournament: the use of a four-point Spidercam on a golf course - in this case on the 18th green.

We're getting incredible shots with it and have the kind of versatility on the 18th hole that we have never had before, says Hamish Greig, director, golf operations, EMG, part of Gravity Media Group.

The 153rd Open Championship features a golf first: a four-point cablecam (in this case, a Spidercam) flying over the 18th green.

The Spidercam PRO System is outfitted with a Sony P43 camera and a Canon CJ12 lens. According to Dave Whitlock, project manager, ACS, part of EMG, the flight area around the green measures 90 x 45 x 17 meters. The towers were built into the grandstand by Unusual Rigging.

Three aspects to the system need to be in constant consideration, Greig notes: It cannot be in the line of sight of the golfer. You must manage the position of the shadows of the Spidercam camera gimbal and cables. And it mustn't make any noise whatsoever. Those three things make it a tool that requires a lot of talent to set up and operate, but we've been getting it right so far, and it has been beautiful.

From left: EMG's Greg Livermore, Alan Jessup, Jackie O'Shea, and Hamish Greig at the 153rd Open Championship at Royal Portrush

The Spidercam is just one of the specialty cameras that ACS is providing. Also in the mix are nine bunker cams, a UHD railcam at the sixth hole, two tunnel cams, two bridge cameras, a camera at the starter podium, a lipstick camera on the 1st tee, an arrivals camera, a camera in the recorder's cabin, and two Smarthead 3 robos with box lenses on the putting green and driving range (NBC Sports also has four of those systems on the course).

In addition, Gravity Media's Connectivity division is providing 18 RF cameras for the world feed: seven handhelds, two Steadicams, two Top Tracer cameras, one cinematic-style camera, two UHD RF cameras on Holes 6 and 16, a drone, two XMO ultra-slow-motion cameras, and the airplane coverage. Connectivity is also providing four cameras to NBC Sports, four to Sky UK, two to Japan's U-NEXT, and four for the Marquee groups, along with two reverse-vision course-wide monitors.

The UHD HDR cameras are part of another new workflow: the production team for the par 3 holes is not onsite but is located in broadcast facilities at Sky Studios Osterley Park, near London.

Gravity Media Chairman/CEO John Newton (left) and Regional CEO, UK, Jamie Hindhaugh at the Open Championship compound

We're doing the par 3 UHD HDR as a remote-surface production, says Greig, with the surfaces and production team in London remotely controlling the devices, which are here in the EMG OB.

The other big change this year is a return to a pre-pandemic type of operation, with NBC Sports doing a full side-by-side production. They have a lot more green cameras, and that gives them a lot more freedom to tell their own story, Greig says of the approximately 15 additional NBC unilateral cameras.

The core of the compound for the Open Championship, as it has been since 2017, is a large IBC building comprising production-control rooms, replay areas, and audio rooms (and equipment racks). It is home to both the world-feed production team and the NBC Sports team (the Sky UK team continues to cut its show remotely from Osterley Park). The core IBC building is just one part of a large compound that also houses EMG production units and portable cabins and facilities.

On one side of the compound is the world-feed operation: on the other, the unilaterals. According to Greig, Nova 121 was the first truck to turn up for the host-feed buildup and serves as main communications hub for the ETP and world-feed team (until the main golf trucks 112A and B arrive). On the unilateral side are (Nova 111) for NBC Sports, (Nova 53) for Sky Sports, and Nova 5 for Live at The Range.

All the entities are requiring more and more content. Along with the 178 cameras (109 for the world feed, many of which are also available to Sky and NBC), Hawk-Eye is providing around 180 channels of server records, complementing the work done on the EVS servers for the main productions.

The Hawk-Eye servers are doing super isos, which allows us to capture every shot for the archive, says Greig. Three of those operators are also available as regular replay machines in case the main submix EVS operators miss a shot.

As always, a golf major requires a lot of cabling with 24 fiber nodes installed by North One and the EMG cable-rigging team laying down another 35 km of TAC fiber, 22 km of SMPTE, and 10 km of Multi cable.

Moreover, as is the norm, the EMG team had to not only get the Open Championship infrastructure into shape but also facilitate last week's Scottish Open and, from France, the LPGA's Amundi Evian Championship. On Sunday, the trucks went off-air at 10 p.m. and traveled overnight and by ferry to park in Portrush at 8:00 a.m. Monday.

We had 22 RF cameras come here from the Scottish Open, says Greig, as well as 40-odd line cameras, 15 high-power radio mics, and 24 channels of radio talkback. From Evian, we needed our spare TED's [Telecast Elimination Devices, the equivalent of SHEDs in the U.S.] as we need about 135 for this event.

That's a lot of sheds, he continues, especially when you consider we're on-air on the Monday here for Sky plus Live at The Range and Live From for the

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