ESPN has acquired full rights to arguably the highest-profile event on the tennis calendar.
The ESPN family of networks will televise the Wimbledon tennis tournament through 2023 under a twelve-year agreement between ESPN and the All-England Club.
The deal, first reported by Sports Business Journal over the holiday weekend, was officially announced by ESPN on Tuesday.
As part of the deal, ESPN will air Grand Slam tennis for the first time since 2004. The network will televise the men’s and women’s semifinals and finals, and share Round of 16 and quarterfinal coverage with ESPN2.
In recent years, Grand Slam coverage has been relegated to ESPN2, ESPN Classic, and even ESPNU. At least one player was cognizant of tennis’ second-class status; Mardy Fish lamented in 2005 that “Wimbledon can’t even get on normal ESPN” (sptimes.com, 6/19/05).
ESPN2 will still air coverage. In addition, broadcast sibling ABC will air three telecast windows, including same-day tape delayed coverage of the men’s and women’s finals at 3:00 PM ET.
Wimbledon is now the second Grand Slam tennis tournament to air exclusively on cable. The other such event, the Australian Open, also airs on ESPN.
The champions of the Bowl Championship Series, British Open and Wimbledon will all be crowned on ESPN through at least 2014, and the championship game of the NCAA Tournament will also air on cable (TBS) as soon as 2016. The trend of sporting events moving from broadcast to cable, which began with the NBA’s cable-heavy TV deal in 2002, appears to have accelerated in recent years.
(Information from espnmediazone3.com; additional information from sptimes.com)
