Live from the 2025 Ryder Cup: NBC Sports Tackles New World Feed Philosophy as ST-2110 ShinesBy Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director Sunday, September 28, 2025 - 10:04 am
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The 2025 Ryder Cup this weekend has tested the skills not only of the golfers but the core golf production team at NBC Sports who oversaw a new Ryder Cup world feed workflow, their own domestic feed, and then worked closely to ensure that rights holders like Sky Sports, IMG, BBC, Canal+, and others had their needs met throughout the week and during the run up.
We are in charge of the compound this year and it's a big compound and took a lot of work and manpower to get the cable out, but everyone has done a really great job working together to get the show on, says Bridget Cugle, NBC Sports, director, golf remote operations.
Marc Caputo and Bridget Cugle inside the massive TV compound at the 2025 Ryder Cup.
The test of any production team is the ability to pivot to meet changes and in golf that typically means things weather delays that might shorten a day and possibly even extend a tournament a day longer. But at the Ryder Cup this year the biggest change happened just ahead of the event when organizers decided to move the opening ceremony from Thursday to Wednesday due to inclement weather rolling in on Thursday.
Thankfully we had a plan for a Tuesday rehearsal to fax all the cameras to make sure they worked and then the crew for the ceremony was able to come in early on Wednesday to do a rehearsal at 11 so we were ready for the opening ceremony at 4 pm, says Cugle. We had a lot of plans and backup plans to make sure we had all the cameras covered so it went well.
With the ceremony on Wednesday that left a bit of a programming gap for Thursday, but Cugle says the decision to have the team Luke Donald, captain of Team Europe, and Keegan Bradley, captain of Team USA on the NBC set to discuss the different pairings for the following morning worked out well.
It was cool to have them on the set as part of the fun is always seeing who is playing again who, adds Cugle.
The biggest overall production change this year is that the Ryder Cup has gone to a true World Feed production. Previously when the Ryder Cup was in the U.S. the NBC Sports unilateral feed would be the bedrock of the world feed and that often required the world feed production team and others to dance around sponsor elements, breaks, etc. But this year there is a clean international feed and then NBC, Sky, and others use that feed as the basis for their unilateral coverage. Jason Abrams, NBC Sports, technical manager, says for the engineering team it feels similar to an Olympics model where OBS provides the coverage.
We did really well executing all of our production team's needs, wants and wishes, he says. It's the first time we did this but it's not going to be the last time.
From a technical perspective there were two big leaps in production this past weekend: the use of private T-Mobile 5G nodes to provide spectrum to backhaul wireless camera feeds and then the NEP facility in the compound which used TFC and ST-2110 IP to allow for NEP trucks that typically don't work as one large unit to seamlessly be tied together and work as one.
Marc Caputo, NBC Sports, director, remote technical operations, says NBC's golf remote team first worked with TFC during last year's US Open.
TFC has been amazing because we're able to share all these resources and take these trucks that have never worked together and make them work together on an event this big, he says.
In this case two of the NEP Supershooter Tour trucks, PCR and REC FLEX, are tied to with Supershooter 10 (which was built for NBC's upcoming NBA coverage) was a challenge but that NEP worked hard to make sure NEP's TFC platform was up to the task. It was also an ongoing discussion since August of 2024.
Essentially PCR and REC FLEX are acting as if they are part of Supershooter 10, he adds. And then we put EVS in Supershooter 54. But it's great having PCR hear as [NBC Sports Lead Golf Producer and Ryder Cup World Feed Producer] Tommy Roy likes the PCR control room as it has the biggest wall and was built for golf. And then the graphics people like the graphics room. It was built for golf and the people who have to produce golf.
Abrams says it's been fun being part of a technology leap that will only become more important as there are more and more shows of this size and scale.
They upgraded Supershooter 10 and it's great to take two two-truck units to create a four-truck unit, he says. It shows just how powerful ST-2110 technologies can be. and how we can scale things for these type of shows.
Abrams adds that with TFC there are 216 paths between all the trucks and that things have been operating seamlessly with Supershooter 10's router serving as the spine that TFC is running on. Supershooter 54 also has its own spine and then other switches in PCR and REC FLEX hang off of those spines in a leaf configuration.
NEP really did a great job of executing this facility and the best part is that it's one ginormous engineering and fabric and unit instead of multiple trucks, he adds.
Caputo says there were approximately 97 cameras covering the golf with NBC Sports with the NBC Sports and Sky Sports unilateral production teams being able to tap into all of those resources.
Every show is also using the robotic cameras we brought in for Live From' in the practice areas as well as the beauty cam, he says.
There were also some remote operations as the featured groups were produced out of NBC's facility in Stamford (in a first, the featured group coverage had ball tracing integrated into the feed and an ARL tech in Stamford) about an hour away as well as Hawkeye op
