Live From the Ryder Cup: NBC Sports Tackles New World-Feed Philosophy as ST 2110 Shines

The broadcaster worked closely with Sky Sports, IMG, BBC, Canal+, and other rightsholders

The 2025 Ryder Cup this weekend has tested the skills not only of the golfers but of the core golf production team at NBC Sports. The team oversaw a new Ryder Cup world-feed workflow and its own domestic feed and worked closely to ensure that rightsholders Sky Sports, IMG, BBC, Canal+, and others had their needs met during the run-up and throughout the week.

“We are in charge of the compound this year,” notes Bridget Cugle, director, golf remote operations, NBC Sports. “It’s a big compound and took a lot of work and manpower to get the cable out, but everyone has done a great job working together to get the show on.”

Marc Caputo (left) and Bridget Cugle in the massive TV compound at the 2025 Ryder Cup

The test of any production team is the ability to pivot to meet changes. In golf, that typically means weather delays, which might shorten a day and possibly even extend a tournament by a day. At this year’s Ryder Cup, the biggest change happened just ahead of the event: organizers decided to move the Opening Ceremony from Thursday to Wednesday because of inclement weather forecast for Thursday.

“Thankfully,” says Cugle, “we had a plan for a Tuesday rehearsal to fax all the cameras to make sure they worked, and the crew for the ceremony was able to come in early on Wednesday to do a rehearsal at 11. So we were ready for the Opening Ceremony at 4 p.m. We had a lot of plans and backup plans to make sure we had all the cameras covered. It went well.”

With the ceremony taking place on Wednesday, that left a programming gap for Thursday. According to Cugle, that was resolved by having Team Europe Captain Luke Donald and Team USA Captain Keegan Bradley on the NBC set to discuss the different pairings for the following morning. “It was cool to have them on the set,” she says. “Part of the fun is always seeing who is playing against who.”

The biggest overall production change this year is that the Ryder Cup has gone to a true world-feed production. When the Ryder Cup was previously in the U.S., the NBC Sports unilateral feed would be the bedrock of the world feed, and that often required the world-feed production team and others to dance around sponsor elements, breaks, etc. This year, there is a clean international feed, and NBC, Sky, and others use that feed as the basis for their unilateral coverage.

For the engineering team, says NBC Sports Technical Manager Jason Abrams, the workflow feels similar to an Olympics model, in which OBS provides the coverage. “We did well executing all of our production team’s needs, wants, and wishes. It’s the first time we did this, but it’s not going to be the last time.”

From a technical perspective, the production made two big leaps: private T-Mobile 5G nodes were deployed to provide spectrum to backhaul wireless camera feeds, and the use of NEP’s TFC tech platform and ST 2110 IP by the NEP facility in the compound allowed NEP trucks that typically don’t work as one large unit to be seamlessly tied together and work as one.

NBC’s golf remote team first worked with TFC during last year’s U.S. Open. “TFC has been amazing,” says Marc Caputo, director, remote technical operations, NBC Sports. “We’re able to share all these resources and take these trucks that have never worked together and make them work together on an event this big.”

In this case, tying two NEP Supershooter TOUR trucks, PCR and REC FLEX, to Supershooter 10 (which was built for NBC’s upcoming NBA coverage) was a challenge, but NEP worked hard to ensure that its TFC platform was up to the task. It had also been an ongoing discussion since August 2024.

“Essentially,” Caputo adds, “PCR and REC FLEX are acting as if they are part of Supershooter 10. And we put EVS in Supershooter 54. But it’s great having PCR here as [NBC Sports Lead Golf Producer and Ryder Cup world-feed producer] Tommy Roy likes the PCR control room because it has the biggest wall and was built for golf. And the graphics people like the graphics room: it was built for golf and the people who have to produce golf.”

For Abrams, it has been fun being part of a technology leap that will only become more important as shows of this size and scale increase. “They upgraded Supershooter 10, and it’s great to take two two-truck units to create a four-truck unit. It shows just how powerful ST 2110 technologies can be and how we can scale things for these types of shows.”

With TFC, he adds, there are 216 paths between all the trucks, and things have been operating seamlessly with Supershooter 10’s router serving as the spine that TFC runs on. Supershooter 54 also has its own spine, and other switches in PCR and REC FLEX hang off those spines in a leaf configuration. “NEP did a great job of executing this facility,” he notes. “The best part is that it’s one ginormous engineering fabric and unit instead of multiple trucks.”

Approximately 97 cameras are deployed to cover the golf, with all the resources available to the NBC Sports and Sky Sports unilateral production teams, Caputo says, adding that the shows also use the beauty cam and, in the practice areas, the robotic cameras brought in for “Live From” segments.

There were also some remote operations. Featured groups were produced out of NBC’s facility in Stamford about an hour from Bethpage Black (in a first, the featured-group coverage had ball tracing integrated into the feed, and an ARL tech was located in Stamford). In addition, Hawk-Eye operators worked from Oklahoma.

“We expanded our Hawk-Eye replay operations this year with five channels of Hawk-Eye operated by three operators in Tulsa,” Caputo explains. “One operator is supporting the NBC unilateral, and two are supporting the world feed. Hawk-Eye is designed to be scalable, and we just keep on scaling it up.”

With respect to on-the-course changes, the big news was the use of three wireless bunker cams, introduced at the U.S. Open at Oakmont this year; drone tracing via the PGA TOUR’s packaged service (which comprises vendors Bolt6 for data management, ARL for tracing visualization, and Kaze drones); and the use of T-Mobile 5G to backhaul signals from shallow–depth-of-field handhelds and a drone. NBC is using Sony encoders for 5G from two bridge cams and tunnel cams, as well as NEP Specialty Camera’s MT-UHD MiniTx, which can operate in either 5G or RF mode (click here to learn more in SVG’s report on NEP Specialty Cameras).

“It looks good, and the BSI hybrid transmitters give some flexibility because you have the reliability of the traditional microwave and the ability to use 5G,” says Caputo. “The T-Mobile team did a good job at balancing their network so they could make the cameras look good. Everyone has been happy with them.”

Once again, the NBC Sports golf team and the Sky Sports UK-based golf team are collaborating — especially when it comes to studio operations, for which they are sharing the same studio for their respective “Live From” coverage.

“Their pregame show aired on Golf Channel on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and it was one production for both countries,” says Caputo. “One of the benefits in our handling the world feed is, everyone benefits because we have walking announcers from both countries and interviews from both sides. There are different voices and different opinions, and that balance and diversity counts.”