Live from Wimbledon 2023: Mic'ing up players and boosting behind the scenes access By George Bevir
Friday, July 14, 2023 - 10:27
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From mic'ing up players to rolling out new GFX and boosting behind the scenes access, Wimbledon Broadcast Services head of broadcast Paul Davies speaks with SVG Europe about the changes to this year's Championships.
Visitors and viewers alike will have noticed some changes to this year's Wimbledon Championships. While the annual tennis tournament is steeped in tradition, the approach taken to covering the action in SW19 is always under review and subject to revision, an approach perhaps best summed up by this year's tournament tag line of Always like never before'.
As part of an overhaul to its editorial offering, one of the most significant changes for this year was the appointment of Whisper as Wimbledon Broadcast Services (WBS) production partner for the Championships for 2023 and 2024. The deal includes production of the world feed, international highlights, a creative preview film and an official film of The Championships.
And, says All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) head of broadcast, production and media rights Paul Davies, the process of appointing the production company made us think harder and smarter about what we should be doing .
Speaking with SVG Europe on day nine of the Championships, Davies says Whisper is working across multiple strands of content, pointing to the off-court coverage as one of the areas that has seen the biggest change this year.
(L-R) James Muir, broadcast technical manager; Paul Davies, head of broadcast, production & media rights; Georgina Green, broadcast & production manager
We used to have a service called the Wimbledon Channel, which was our own, daily linear programme that sat on our own platforms. A couple of our broadcasters took it, but they found it slightly competitive in terms of what they were offering to viewers.
They were doing their own Wimbledon coverage, and we were offering an alternative, slightly different service. There were some reserved rights that meant we could show one game per match per hour, so they didn't particularly like it. It had served us well over I think the eight or nine years that it had been running, but we looked at it and thought, is this the best service we can provide for both ourselves and to our broadcasters? And we felt could we actually provide something a bit different, which they could integrate into their coverage.
In response, Davies and his team worked with Whisper to create Access all England', a daily, linear offering of behind the scenes content that runs from 9am to 5pm.
It's a production of the very best of the behind-the-scenes cameras, all the beauty cameras as well probably up to 35, says Davies. He explains that previously, broadcasters lost the players once they arrived.
We didn't see them again until they walked on the court. So we wanted to offer the broadcasters, and on our own platforms, that unique experience of coming to Wimbledon and seeing all of this for themselves.
One of the new robotic cameras, operated by ACS, that provides greater behind the scenes access
So we now see the players getting out of their cars, going through the beautiful new Indoor Tennis Centre where we have installed five robotic cameras, under the tunnel into the Millennium Building and in these new environments that we didn't have covered before, like the players lawn where we now have a new robotic camera, the restaurant and corridors of the clubhouse. All these images people won't have seen before.
In addition to the robotic cameras, coverage is supplemented by handheld cameras following the players.
It all means that broadcasters are getting ever changing images of all the players in different environments, which the broadcasters are absolutely loving. They can also put requests in through our Quality Control Centre there to cover a particular player. So, if a broadcaster has no facilities on site, then by taking all the court feeds and Access all England, they can still create a really rich offering.
Davies says that shift was driven, in part, by documentary series such as Box to Box production Break Point gaining greater access to players while broadcasters looked on and questioned their own access.
Fighting the pirates
Piracy is another area of focus for WBS this year, with LaLiga Tech recruited to help counter illegal stream.
Their numbers are extraordinary in terms of what they've already taken down, says Davies. During the first eight days of the Championships, it matched the previous seven years of what we had taken down. What they're finding, and what they're taking down is, is extraordinary which is very reassuring for us, but also for our broadcasters who need their assets protected.
Broadcasters are paying very decent rights fees, and perhaps not being afforded the same privileges, which WBS and wider AELTC is very sympathetic to. That easing up of access, which had been quite guarded in previous years, I think the club is getting more comfortable with, and the players are more familiar with cameras behind the scenes, but in a respectful way.
And the beauty of us doing it in house as WBS is we can work with, obviously the club, but also with the players and their representatives. There's certain environments and situations, where we're cautious; we don't show big close ups of people eating, for example.
Other strands developed by WBS and Whisper include a one-hour linear programme called the Aorangi Hour, presented from the Aorangi practice courts 12-1pm, plus bite-sized content such as daily fashion show Wimbledon Threads' and interviews on the purple carpet as players and VIPs arrive. The aim, says Davies, is to create co
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Live from Wimbledon 2023: Mic'ing up players and boosting behind the scenes access By George Bevir 
