“We've also been looking at how else we can use Brightcove to deliver more inclusion and bring more people to sports in a different way,” says O’Neil. Inspired by Alcott’s efforts, Tennis Australia’s innovation team leveraged Brightcove technology to create a 15-channel spatial audio experience specifically designed for people who are unable to see a tennis match. CREATING A NEW SPATIAL AUDIO EXPERIENCE FOR THE VISUALLY IMPAIREDĭylan Alcott, an Australian wheelchair Grand Slam champion and Paralympic gold medallist tennis player, has become a prominent advocate for people who are mobility-challenged, helping to raise awareness and create more opportunities for inclusion in sports. “It has meant that if someone is covering a match on court 13 or court 16, or on a court that would not necessarily be on a terrestrial or OTT platform, they’re allowed to see it, talk about it, and provide commentary and coverage for it.” All in all, 1,200 broadcast journalists and 475 media representatives reported on the 2021 Australian Open from the Media Hub, earning Tennis Australia positive global coverage for supporting a group that’s key to the tournament’s success. “We were trying to create that ‘as if you were here’ experience for our media,” says O’Neil. In the Media Hub, journalists could watch live match footage on all 16 courts, livestream press conferences, watch behind-the-scenes content, and even participate in both press conferences and one-on-one interviews via Microsoft Teams, all from one centralised platform. We had a really strong and clear vision of what we wanted to achieve.”īy creating a new Media Hub video platform, Tennis Australia was able to replicate the access and experience media would have covering the event on site. This gave us the opportunity to leverage our existing Brightcove investment and infrastructure as part of creating our Media Hub. “Our aim was to provide a seamless service and provide media around the world with the best possible access to every match. Open or the French Open, to then report on it and generate media exposure,” says O’Neil. “In some scenarios last year, journalists were forced to watch local broadcasts or find local coverage of, say, the U.S.
Typically, Tennis Australia prides itself on catering to the needs of all stakeholders, and this year there were specific challenges for the international media, which mostly had to cover the entire event remotely. There are three groups of people who are critical to any successful sporting event: the players, the patrons, and the press.
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“We were looking at how to bring everything together so there’s a consistency and seamlessness in our video experience.” CREATING A NEW VIRTUAL MEDIA HUB “I suppose in a lot of ways, we just tried to remove barriers for our event – from a fan perspective on site, for our media, for our staff, and especially our fans consuming globally as well,” says Tennis Australia Supervising Producer of Live Events, John O’Neil. So the team at Tennis Australia decided to view these obstacles as opportunities to think differently about video and create new experiences for tennis fans in Australia and around the world. And with the government’s COVID-19 restrictions, people who would typically be cheering from the stands would have to watch from afar. That solved the travel problem, but it created a new one with time zones: If a match started at 5:00 PM Melbourne time, it would run until 4:00 AM the next morning – not great for viewership. But with a cap on the number of international visitors permitted in the country, the team at Tennis Australia decided to run the men’s and women’s qualifying matches for AO 2021 in Doha and Dubai. Tennis Australia typically hosts up to 400 athletes for the Australian Open (AO).
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