Amazon Prime Video are making another move to expand their sporting coverage by taking the rights to the regular tour of women's tennis from next year.
Tennis staff at BT Sport have been informed by email that they will not be showing the main WTA circuit after this season, with the broadcasting arm of the online retail behemoth taking over.
It is another retreat from sport for BT, who have held the rights since 2013, and a further acquisition for Amazon, who already have the US Open and the main ATP Tour but not any of the three other Grand Slams yet.
This was expected. Hope Amazon sort out their issues by then as their coverage is still poor. Only 25 frames per second is rubbish in 2019 - I stick to TennisTV for ATP as their video is 50fps - very smooth.
I can't say BT SPort did much by tennis so who knows what the Amazon can do. But I don't think for exposure that a streaming service having exclusive rights is a big positive.
I can't say BT SPort did much by tennis so who knows what the Amazon can do. But I don't think for exposure that a streaming service having exclusive rights is a big positive.
I've had Prime ever since it was just a annual delivery price. I actually didn't know it included streaming for ages. However while I'll see it all even better, as I don't have BT sport I'm not sure it's good for the exposure of Women's Tennis generally. More and more seem to be hidden in obscure paywalls
I know; it's frightening. I don't even shop there any more, much less pay $120/year(!) to belong to Prime. They treat their employees like slaves, not to mention they have allowed their site to be completely overrun by counterfeits.
For watching WTA matches, well, I'll manage somehow.
Added with ATP - so if you're just a tennis fan, it's good that the rights are in one place
Probably end up with match choice like the ATP get, so not restricted to centre court or Brits
Disadvantages
I have Amazon, but I've definitely watched far less ATP than when it was on Sky. I'm not as interested, but might have switched over at a break and then continued watching if exciting. If you want to watch it and are interested you will, but it definitely is harder work loading it all up, or in my case physically going to the TV pressing a button to move and then loading it up
Can't record
Picture quality not as good
If you watch on repeat and open the video and see 75-80 mins duration, then you pretty much know it's going to be 2 sets and you'll effectively know the result after set one.
Not fully live, and a few points behind, so little things like in play bets are affected and you could be checking other scores and see the match you are watching has gone from *30-15 to actually broken in real time.
Exposure - BT Sport isn't in as many homes as Sky Sports, but it does exclusively show the Champions League (and Europa League) so it's not as if it's some obscure channel like Eleven Sports or Premier.
I have Sky, BT and Amazon so doesn't really affect me in a sense I'm going to have to take out another subscription, but I think I'd have preferred it to have stayed on BT. I now have a decision as to whether I keep BT as the tennis was a big factor in keeping it.
I posted this in May, and while I'd still prefer it to be on an actual TV channel, I am coming round to the idea. Bar the feed cutting out (for me and many others) in the closing stages of Andreescu vs Serena in New York, their US Open coverage was generally excellent, and with 49 events, it looks like they are basically taking over the WTA TV service here, so we'll probably get Kevin Skinner and co (which isn't great) for the vast majority of events, and then I'd imagine they will have their own team for the PMs, and maybe the P5s at a push.
There'll always be issues with streaming services, not least with visibility, but overall, I'm in a more positive mindset about this, and don't think it'll be as bad as I first feared when the deal was initially announced.
Although I'm slightly apprehensive of there being no TV coverage, I think it's excellent that ATP and WTA tennis will be in one place, with match choice available, and for much cheaper than Sky and BT were offering.
BT Sport never improved on the prime defect in Eurosport's tennis offering, which was the lack of multiple court streams for TV viewers. Occasionally, they'd offer one alternate court, but that's exactly what was available to Eurosport viewers with the broadcaster's alternate channels.
There are some problems they'll need to work out, but they're teething issues, and if they've taken on tennis broadcasting in good faith, they'll surely do something to address them.
Bad news, though not unexpected now. BT Sport's coverage has generally been excellent; well put together, exhaustive and uninterrupted, and they would even have two small international tournaments on different channels. It just isn't the same watching via a stream, and as someone pointed out you can't record those. I also think it could suffer from being on the same platform as the atp, people might just choose to watch that instead. One of the main reasons I almost ignore men's tennis for the WTA is because I have had BT Sport and not Sky the last few years. Just a shame they threw all their money at the Champions League and a pretty small but stupidly expensive portion of the EPL rights.
This is really good news for me. BT Sport is too expensive to add on my current setup and I already have Amazon Prime. I've really watched way less WTA since Eurosport lost the rights.
I suppose the other thing is I've not really experienced the problems with the Prime service that others have complained about. I still think Amazon's Smart TV interface is poor compared to Netflix so they could really do with improving that now they are moving much more into the live sports arena.
AO was shown on Amazon via the Eurosport channel which you can add to your monthly subscription. It was like 1p extra for 6 months. Runs out just after French Open... oh yeh, so French Open will be on Amazon too. Kind of.
You miss the years in the 2000's of trying to catch bad quality streams late at night for live ITF tennis or something where you couldn't even identify either player unless you had prior knowledge of their clothes for that tournament. We've been spoilt for years, but it's still sad the WTA is all over the place.
I’m not happy about this. I like the BT coverage and the commentators and contributors (they better sign up Jo Durie and Anne Keothavong!)
Plus I’m worried the WTA will end up the poor relation on Amazon Tennis. Will we get full coverage or if there is an atp event will that be given priority with presenters etc. Answer, almost certainly yes! Still, the Brit commentators like Durie, AnnieK, Davids Law and Mercer, AnnabelleC, Chris Bradman etc have moved from Eurosport of BT and will probably move to Amazon(let’s hope they get offers)
As a Kvitova fan, my Sky box is FULL of Petra’s matches that I can revisit after a disappointing loss. Plus I often will record a match when I’m at work - cos let’s face it, most of us don’t sit watching tennis all day every day! Like someone said earlier, I hated seeing ‘replay match’ on the Amazon app at the AO with match time as if kind of took away the suspense.
On the other hand, it could be cheaper. I only watch women’s tennis and rugby union and those are both on BT Sport at present, but they have shoved up prices a lot. I wonder how many people have Amazon vs BT Sport?
Wish we had Prime streaming in States too but with Tennis Channel in US, I doubt it ever gonna happen. I don't mind paying for TC plus but the problem I have with TC Plus is that I don't get all the matches in a tournament. Even today, due to some reason, I couldn't find stream for the final. It happens very frequently where you can watch 2nd Round, 3rd Round but then all of a sudden you cannot find the link for QF/SF.
TC and TC Plus have shown all women's matches this week, and have highlighted their matches on tv (even relegating Novak's semi vs dimitrov yesterday to TC plus and most paris matches to 2nd class) including today's wta YEC finals. Can't complain. They've also shown each WTA tournament to the end if at least on TC plus. I haven't looked back to wtatv
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