A new era began for The Open this week with European Tour Productions (ETP) providing host-broadcast facilities for the first time.
A raft of new innovations have made this year’s Open at Royal Troon the most technically sophisticated and comprehensive ever as Sky Sports, the domestic UK broadcaster, and NBC Sports, the US rights holders, embraced the opportunity to offer a new perspective on golf’s oldest major championship.
Wire cams on the Postage Stamp eighth hole and alongside the practice ground, bunker cams, rail cams and the Open Zone on the range are among the many enhancements for the television viewers after months of planning finally came to fruition.
At the heart of the international broadcast compound is CTV OB, the outside-broadcast–facilities company that works with Sky and ETP week in week out during the European Tour, and it’s all hands on deck for the Championship.
ETP and partners Sky Sports and NBC bring a wealth of experience in covering golf through their weekly coverage of The European Tour and share a collective ambition to push the boundaries with the use of augmented graphics, statistics, and ancillary-camera coverage to bring fans closer to the action.
With the ETP world-feed production being used by both Sky Sports and NBC Sports, ETP have the ability to deploy more cameras for the world feed than any previous Open. There are around 175 cameras onsite, 99 of them for ETP while Sky Sports has 17 cameras and NBC Sports approximately 40.
Wire cam capturing the action on the Postage Stamp hole
On Sky Sports, the opening tee-shot was broadcast live for the first time on Thursday as Colin Montgomerie got proceedings under way at 6.30am with live coverage running until 9pm for the first two rounds and 12-hour sessions of coverage over the weekend – plus an extended highlights and analysis show each evening and a special ‘How The Open was won’ look back at all the key moments from the week.
Among the features is the Sky Cart, where players go through post-round analysis, and a new feature in the Open Zone, as players analyse their shots in a dedicated bay on the range with data from Protracer and Trackman. Sky are working with Virtual Eye for flyovers, Perfect Parallel for models and the Shot Centre back at Sky; and Pinpoint, providing weather data and Chyron Hego virtual placement yardage markers. All of which adds to the coverage, anchored in a huge studio on the course.
More than 1,000 personnel are behind the broadcast production, a monumental logistical challenge, and ultimately all this new broadcast technology has turned golf’s most traditional championship into a state-of-the-art production.
