US Open 2025: ESPN Aims To Bring Viewers’ Ears Closer to the Net

The audio team is serving up more player and coach audio, reduced latency

It has been a long time since Atlanta Braves pitcher John Rocker had to take the No. 7 train out to then-Shea Stadium. In 1999, he described the ride: “Imagine having to take the 7 train looking like you’re in Beirut, next to some kid with purple hair, right next to some dude who got out of jail for the fourth time.” A quarter century later, Shea is now Citi Field, and fans heading to the US Open this week will find an upgraded subway replacing the funky train of Rocker’s description.

New York City’s annual tennis moment also has some nice upgrades to experience this year, particularly when it comes to audio.

Athlete Audio

In fact, says Audio Supervisor Florian Brown, the audio team is taking a page out of the MLB audio playbook, updating the wireless bodypacks used on players for courtside interviews during practice to the Q5X PlayerMic QX5100 bodypacks that FOX and ESPN have deployed on baseball broadcasts. In addition, a Bluetooth IFB and a Sennheiser Presence earpiece will have a lighter configuration that he says encourages conversation and thus viewer engagement. The new transmitters will come with their own ready-to-wear vest, making the process even more transparent.

“We’re not going to try to sew anything into anyone’s outfit,” he explains, “but we’re going to give them a vest with a microphone on it. That way, they’re able to run around, hit the ball, be a little more aggressive, and get into their mindset while they’re practicing.”

Florian Brown (left) and Leonard Fisher head the audio team for ESPN’s coverage of US Open tennis.

Viewers will also hear more conversations with the coaches via a Sennheiser SK2250 bodypack transmitter, which will be active when they’re in the coaches box.

“We’re going to try to do some in-game interviews with coaches. We’ll put a [lavaliere] and an IFB on them and talk during the match,” he says, pointing out that there were as many as two dozen such interviews with coaches and players last year. “Where we can’t get to the player, we can get to the coach.”

There’s also a third “serve” microphone along the sideline near center court, something the team has tried in the past and plans to refine this year “to fill in that space a little bit more,” Brown says. Management of those and other mics will be via a total of nine Calrec Artemis console — covering domestic, host, and international feeds — around the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center campus.

To Cover the Player Journey

Brown, who’s pairing again this year with Audio Supervisor Leonard Fisher, notes that “snoop” cameras liberally deployed in the player warmup areas, entrances, and hallways will be accompanied by microphones.

“We basically want to try to cover the journey that the player makes from the practice court,” Brown explains, noting the use of the Dante connectivity format throughout the broadcast-audio infrastructure. “Through the building to the main court where they’re playing and places along the way, we just try to follow them along and make sure we’ve got audio and video along their journey.”

RF Challenge

New York City’s sports-sound bête noir is always RF interference. The solution, says Brown, is strategic placement of Riedel Bolero antennas and transmitters throughout the grounds.

“The problem in New York, as you know, is that the RF signal is always a little bit dicey,” he laments. “In New York, you can put up all the antennas you want, but that doesn’t mean your RF’s going to work.”

That stronger signal acquisition also offers a boost to sonic tonal quality, not something Bluetooth is noted for.

Another potential challenge is audio latency, which can create disorienting echoes in user earpieces and are a byproduct of a sprawling broadcast campus and, particularly, the multiple transitions the audio makes between digital and analog platforms, such as consoles and earpieces.

“That’s really where our biggest sticking point is,” Brown explains. “I go from a digital device into a digital console; then I go into an analog ADAM [intercom] frame and right back out again to digital. We’re getting more confident in our abilities to manage these networks,” he adds. “We’re able to speed that buffer time up a bit more each time, and, as we start getting more comfortable with ST 2110, we’re getting more confident in bringing that latency time down even further.”

In Control

The control rooms for Ashe and Armstrong stadiums — where A1s Tim Bischof and Jason Polansky, respectively, are mixing the domestic feeds — have Dolby Atmos 5.1.4 monitoring using Genelec 8320 and 8330 speakers, part of the larger infrastructure installed again this year by Gravity Media. World-feed clients have the option of taking the immersive feed.

ESPN’s domestic feed remains in surround because of infrastructure limitations. That’s a constraint Brown expects to be lifted with the US Open acquiring a new media-deal landscape next year and parent organization USTA taking over host-broadcasting duties from ESPN. He notes the ongoing infrastructure upgrades taking place at most of the major broadcaster as the inflection for the US Open’s audio format.

“It’s probably going to be a couple of years,” he says, “but, once the ST 2110 infrastructure starts getting into all these older control rooms — ESPN’s updating, NBC’s going through a major technical update starting in 2026, all these people are trying to get up to ST 2110 — then you’re going to have the resources to be able to push that Atmos across and move it and record it and do everything it can do.

“Right now,” he continues, “everyone’s still in their legacy media environments. We’ll need everything from the beginning to the middle to the end to be 2110 to push all this stuff along, but it’s coming. It’s coming.”