Live From US Open 2022: Rightsholders' Needs, Team of Partners Drive USTA's Innovations New tech includes UHD on Arthur Ashe, 1080p on other show courts By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Tuesday, September 6, 2022 - 7:08 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
The 2022 US Open Tennis Championships at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens, New York, have taken things to a new level. Record crowds are matched by record viewing audiences on ESPN, and the USTA is working to deliver in new ways for rightsholders and tennis fans around the globe. Over the past two years, the US Open production effort was reshaped by the pandemic, but this year's operation, masks aside, feels pretty much back to normal, and the team was able to embrace new technologies, including UHD on Arthur Ashe Stadium and 1080p on the remaining show courts.
USTA Managing Director, Broadcast Patti Fallick (and the USTA production team) have spent a large portion of their waking days in the USTA Broadcast Building, located across the road behind Arthur Ashe Stadium. And after two years of smaller representation by rightsholders due to COVID, both old and new rightsholders are onsite in force.
It has been great to have the broadcast building fully utilized with all of our broadcast partners onsite, she says. We also have a lot of new broadcast partners this year, like Nine in Australia, ECLAT/Spo-TV in Southeast Asia, Spark in New Zealand, and Sony in India. And everybody has sent crews, no matter where they are from in the world. Everybody was just happy to be back onsite, even before we knew about Serena Williams.
The big news this year is the leap to UHD and 1080p, both important moves to keep rightsholders around the world happy, especially because UHD deployment has become a reality in Europe, Japan, India, and China.
We were planning for 1080p and also for UHD for a while because, in a lot of instances, it's a contractual obligation with rightsholders, Fallick explains. COVID derailed those plans for a while, but we're happy to be able to offer 1080p to rightsholders. I think the improved quality of the feed is noticeable.
A Spidercam at Louis Armstrong court raises the production level and gives a new look to coverage.
Use of native UHD for matches in Arthur Ashe Stadium puts the USTA at the technology forefront. True native-UHD production is the exception in the U.S., even for content ultimately delivered to viewers in UHD.
We were considering UHD for Arthur Ashe and worked closely with our partners at ESPN, in their role as host for the US Open, to move in that direction, says Fallick. It was a challenge to figure out the workflow and kudos to the engineering team led by ESPN Senior Remote Operations Specialist Sam Olson and Senior Technical Specialist Steve Raymond, NEP Senior Project Manager Nick Romano, and Gravity Media Director, Special Projects, Hamish Harris and his team. Everybody worked together to figure out how we can do 1080p and native UHD.
Our goal, she continues, was to make sure that every entity that receives a video signal - whether that be SMT, Hawkeye, our in-house IPTV system, broadcasters, TOC, or other touchpoints - could get the signals in 1080p and would be able to receive it into their individual infrastructures. It took some doing to pull it off, and, candidly, I held my breath until we made the final switchover. But it worked out really well, thanks to the hard work and efforts by the ESPN host technical teams and all the communication and collaboration by the different vendors.
The move to UHD had a ripple effect on the USTA's world-feed graphics package as well as archiving and file distribution.
We hadn't updated our graphics package in a long time, notes Fallick. SMT designed a really modern look for our new UHD graphic package for the world feed. It's clean, bright, and modern and puts us one step ahead on that front, as we move towards more UHD coverage.
With respect to file distribution and archiving, she says the teams at Veritone and Thumbwar stepped up to the challenge in a big way: When we first started talking about UHD, our partners from Veritone, who handle that content, looked at me and said, That's going to be a lot of content.' But it turned out to be fortuitous because we now have Serena's last US Open run in UHD, including iso cams, and that is a win all around. But, yes, it is a lot more content for them to move into the cloud and archive.
A new addition to US Open coverage is the towel cam, a miniature camera mounted a few feet behind each towel bin at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
The USTA also pushed ESPN to create a new look with the addition of cameras behind the towel bins and the return of the Spidercam cabled aerial camera system to Louis Armstrong Stadium, the court located next to Arthur Ashe that hosts the second-most-important matches.
It elevates the look and feel of coverage, and, at home, it feels bigger, says Fallick. Kudos to Jamie and the team.
Williams's announcement that the US Open would be her final event set off a chain reaction of not only ticket requests but also how to honor one of the greatest tennis players of all time.
The fact that Serena announced that she wanted to do it here was special, says Fallick. We wanted to find a unique, special way to honor her and do a special tribute. Our Managing Director, Marketing, Nicole Kankam; Director, Marketing, Nicole Munroe; and Executive Producer, US Open Productions, Michael Fiur; and ESPN, VP, Production, Jamie Reynolds spent a lot of time brainstorming, along with our Tournament Director Stacey Allaster. How can we do this and find the right tone? What's the right video, and what's the right presentation?
It was special and electric, Fallick continues, espe
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
13/05/2026
New Adobe Premiere Color Grading Mode Accelerated on NVIDIA GPUs
Joel Pennington May 13, 2026
0 Comments
New NVIDIA RTX-accelerated features streamlin...
13/05/2026
Grass Valley announced that dB Broadcast has delivered new IP-based outside broadcast (OB) trucks for Cloudbass, featuring Grass Valley LDX 100 Series cameras a...
13/05/2026
Ikegami will exhibit the latest additions to its wide range of broadcast production cameras, control units, viewfinders and monitors on stand 5D3-1 at Broadcast...
13/05/2026
FISE, working with the founding members of the XR Sports Alliance (XRSA), Accedo, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and HBS, have collaborated to develop an immersive...
13/05/2026
Canon Unveils New EOS R6 V Full-Frame EOS Camera and RF20-50mm F4 L IS USM PZ Bu...
13/05/2026
Boston Conservatory at Berklee Honors Beth Morrison and Moses Pendleton at Comme...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Creative software developer Foundry today announced the latest developments on Nuke Stage. A purpose-built application for end-to-end virtual production and in-...
13/05/2026
A definitive portrait of one of Ireland's most influential musicians
New TV documentary airs Monday 18 May on RT One and RT Player at 9.35pm
Watch the...
13/05/2026
Agentic AI is changing the way users get work done. Following the success of OpenClaw, the community is embracing new open source agentic frameworks. The latest...
13/05/2026
Reinforcement-learning agents - AI systems that learn by trial and error - can c...
12/05/2026
Beyond the Hype: A Strategic Post-Hoc Analysis of NAB 2026 If NAB Show 2026 had an underlying theme, it was a quiet, industry-wide pivot from the high-energy sp...
12/05/2026
Guntermann and Drunck (G&D), a Panoptec Technologies Group company, and CT Square, led by Chandresh Shah, have announced a joint venture to distribute G&D and V...
12/05/2026
With 30 days until the start of the FIFA World Cup 2026, Telemundo, the exclusive Spanish-language home of the tournament in the United States, has announced th...
12/05/2026
The NHL has announced the return of Stanley Pup for its third consecutive year, a 90-minute special featuring adoptable rescue dogs competing on a miniature rin...
12/05/2026
NBCUniversal presented its 2026 Upfront to advertisers at Radio City Music Hall, detailing upcoming programming across NBC, Peacock, Bravo, and Versant properti...
12/05/2026
FOX Sports has announced funding for the Fandom and Social Connection Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Publ...
12/05/2026
TNDV and Live Media, both divisions of Live Media Group, supported live broadcast coverage around NCAA Final Four weekend in Indianapolis, including the March M...
12/05/2026
The European Football Alliance (EFA) has announced a content distribution agreement with Fubo Sports Network, the free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channel ...
12/05/2026
For the first time, Spanish-speaking fans in the U.S. will have two separate tel...
12/05/2026
CP Communications led a comprehensive spectrum management initiative on behalf of Churchill Downs during Kentucky Derby week, coordinating RF assets across the ...
12/05/2026
LiveU has announced a strategic partnership with DRONERESPONDERS, a 501(c)3 non-...
12/05/2026
Open Broadcast Systems has announced that BMC TV, a specialist in IP transport of broadcast content, has selected the Open Broadcast Systems 5G Flyaway solution...
12/05/2026
NEP Europe, part of NEP Group, has announced it will deliver broadcast solutions...
12/05/2026
Grass Valley has announced continued collaboration with Ravensbourne University ...
12/05/2026
Stats Perform has announced the launch of Opta Pulse, an AI-assisted video creation and distribution platform for leagues, rights holders, and broadcasters. The...
12/05/2026
FOX Sports has announced a collaboration with Sesame Workshop to integrate Sesame Street characters into FOX Sports' FIFA World Cup 2026 programming. Conten...
12/05/2026
To date, NHL Productions has produced 19 broadcasts with commentary in American Sign Language
NHL in ASL (American Sign Language) may be just one show, but the...
12/05/2026
Google's Brian Albert: creators, athletes, highlights, nostalgia, second-scr...
12/05/2026
A still from Past Lives by Celine Song, an official selection of the Premieres program at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. (Courtesy of Sundance Institute | p...
12/05/2026
Spotify is where fans and artists come together, turning discovery into somethin...
12/05/2026
Features patented Marco-MMC clocking technology
Black Lion Audio's latest release combines the company's expertise in clocking with their renowned p...
12/05/2026
New Track Panel, sequencer upgrades & more
Following their recent public beta release, Reason Studios have announced the full release of Reason 14. With the...
12/05/2026
One month to go! SBS reveals expansive FIFA World Cup 2026 lineup beyond the pi...
12/05/2026
Rohde & Schwarz presents its advanced solutions for power electronics testing at...
12/05/2026
aconnic AG (ISIN: DE000A0LBKW6), Munich, has developed a modified fund raising p...
12/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/05/2026
Tyrell Corporation, specialists in high-end live sports and entertainment broadcasts, was tasked with delivering compelling broadcast coverage of premier equest...
12/05/2026
Registration is now open for IBC2026 as the global media, entertainment and technology community prepares to converge on the RAI Amsterdam from 11 14 September ...
12/05/2026
Ross Video, a global leader in live video production technology, will present its latest innovations and integrated production workflows at BroadcastAsia 2026, ...
12/05/2026
500 selected leaders from around the world across start-ups, corporates, and venture capital. Over 50bn in assets under management among attending investors, a...
Live From US Open 2022: Rightsholders' Needs, Team of Partners Drive USTA's Innovations New tech includes UHD on Arthur Ashe, 1080p on other show courts By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director 
