Sky Sports Open Championship Coverage Overcomes the Elements

Main production is handled from a control room at broadcaster’s headquarters in Osterley

“It was a wet weekend, and we had a bit of a runaway winner,” recalls Jason Wessely, executive producer, golf, Sky Sports, “but the viewing figures were still strong because the cricket was washed out and F1, as always, was a bit of a foregone conclusion. We felt like we had a good window for the end of the day.”

The Sky Sports team relies heavily on the world feed for the core of its coverage, unlike NBC Sports, which cuts in a lot of its own cameras.

The Open Zone played a big part in Sky Sports coverage of the Open Championship.

“The world feed pretty much tells the story,” says Wessely. “They don’t take any breaks, so they aren’t having to catch up with themselves. They pretty much have all the bases covered when it comes to narratives on the course, so we don’t need to cherry-pick cameras off the router and try to inject our own stories. It’s a safe and reliable feed that we can sit on and then just add our own commentary, graphics, commercial breaks, and interviews.”

For any golf fan, the Sky Sports interviews — whether done on the course with an RF camera, at the Sky Cart, or at the Sky Zone on the practice range, where there are two cameras and a jib — are always insightful, often entertaining, and definitely informative (ditto for the practice-range interviews where players like Jon Rahm simply h0ld an RF mic for a walk-and-talk interview down the fairway).

“We take 12 cameras to the open,” notes Wessely, “but those are used mostly for peripheral presenter-led content. Relying on the [Inertia Unlimited] xMos and the other pieces of the world feed, we don’t have to add a lot.”

An ACS bunker cam was installed into a bunker near the Open Zone set.

A new deliverable from ETP and the world feed was the CarCam, a dashboard-mounted camera in the car driving players to and from the range, which was about a three-minute drive from the course. The camera captured a wide shot of everyone sitting in the car, but there was no audio.

“I quite like it,” says Wessely. “Any time you see a golfer in a different situation, it’s a good move. You saw them in their various states, whether it was Padraic Harrington looking at his score card and checking it out in full for strategy or others sitting there taking in fluids or just looking into space. It’s interesting to see shots of players you don’t normally see.”

The main production team for Sky’s coverage was located in a control room at Sky Sports headquarters in Osterley, and Wessely says the team is still learning about how to produce such a big production at Sky. The driving range’s distance from the main compound made the Sky Zone production feel even more removed.

“At times, it felt like a double remote,” he says. “We were remote not only from the Sky Gallery but from the Sky Zone itself; we couldn’t jump in a buggy and drive to the range like we could at St. Andrews. But we made it work, and the viewer at home wouldn’t have known how far away it was.”

The Sky Sports golf-production team is gearing up for the AIG Women’s Open at Walton Heath golf course Aug. 10-13. Besides plenty of golf, there will be a fan village featuring a performance by Ellie Goulding.

“They’re putting a lot of effort into encouraging new fans to come and watch golf,” Wessely points out. “It will be a festival rather than just a golf tournament, and we’ll be trying to help tell that story. We’ll also have a Sky Zone and Sky Cart,” he adds. “We’re trying to match what we do at the Open Championship with player interviews on the range and a preview show on 9 August.”

Then it’s off the Fed Ex playoffs, the Irish Open, the BMW Championship, and the Ryder Cup.

Says Wessely, “We’re busy through the end of September.”