Live on the Water: The Rowing Channel Pulls Off Historic Production at Head Of The Charles Regatta

Dolby OptiView is deployed for live coverage of the three-day boat race

When it comes to rowing, it simply doesn’t get any bigger than the Head Of The Charles Regatta. With 11,000 athletes rowing in more than 2,500 boats in 73 events, the world’s largest three-day regatta presents a unique live-production challenge each year for The Rowing Channel (a Watersports Broadcasting Corp. brand). This year, TRC not only deployed its largest production to date but also provided viewers with a brand-new way to view the action on Massachusetts’s Charles River via Dolby OptiView technology.

With 11,000 athletes rowing in more than 2,500 boats in 73 events, the Head Of The Charles is the world’s largest three-day regatta

“I’ve been to all the biggest races, and I can tell you from experience that you’re not going see this level of coverage on the water almost anywhere else,” says Brandin Grams, principal engineer, Netrendity Networks, who has been the driving force of The Rowing Channel since its inception in 2014. “There’s just no other event like this, especially for a head race, and it’s up to us to bring that same level to our productions.”

To provide a more comprehensive and interactive experience for this year’s race (which took place Oct. 17-19), The Rowing Channel partnered with Dolby OptiView to debut a new multiview experience on TRC.live. In a first for live rowing coverage, viewers could build their own viewing setup featuring live video streams from prominent checkpoints on the Charles River. Viewers can watch up to six feeds at once — all delivered in under five seconds from camera to screen.

Coverage of the regatta is produced from the former WBPX broadcast facility on Harvard’s athletics campus.

“There’s simply nothing like the Head Of The Charles,” said Watersports Broadcasting CTO Sev de Neergaard prior to the race. “It’s special and singular in the sport of rowing. At the same time, head races can often be very boring to watch simply because of the nature of the competition. But giving you more views, more interaction, and the ability to find the athlete you want to follow, we think, is going to make head races more exciting.”

Inside the Production: Six Sites, Four REMI Workflows

This year, TRC grew its coverage to four REMI workflows spanning six unique sites along the Charles River, each with its own dedicated feed captured through an SRT-backed network. That’s up from four locations along the river for last year’s coverage.

TRC grew its coverage to four REMI workflows spanning six unique sites along the Charles River

The sites included the Cambridge Boat Club at the Eliot Street Bridge, the Harvard Weld Boathouse, and the Riverside Boat Club. Livestreams were also available from the HOCR Finish Line at Herter Park, the HOCR Start Line at Boston University’s DeWolfe Boathouse, and the podium at the HOCR Awards Tent.

In terms of cameras, TRC deployed a DJI Mavic 4 Pro drone, eight Canon primary-coverage cameras, three AIDA POVs, a PTZOptics camera, and two Ubiquiti G5 Pro PoE units.

“It’s a 3½-mile course. A lot can happen in 3½ miles when you’re staggering boats every five seconds to start,” said de Neergaard. “The Head Of The Charles is unique also because it has bridges. [Competitors] have to steer the boat when side by side with someone and determine who gets to go first through that bridge since it’s not wide enough for both. That adds a lot of excitement, and we want to be able to capture those moments.”

TRC’s six locations are up from four locations along the river for last year’s coverage.

Coverage of the regatta is produced from the former WBPX broadcast facility on Harvard’s athletics campus. Grams and his production team developed an edge-to-cloud service, which is transmitted directly to the team at the WBPX studio when a direct broadcast connection isn’t possible around the course. All footage is fed to the studio via a local wireless network that goes through Harvard Stadium and then to WBPX. The team also developed homegrown tally-light and communications systems through Android devices for camera operators and the rest of the crew.

“One thing that’s unique about the Head Of The Charles is, it has so many mixed streams going out telling a story overall instead of just [standalone camera] feeds,” said de Neergaard. “To do all that as a REMI [production] is complex, but we’ve been able to pull it off.”

All footage is fed to the studio via a local wireless network that goes through Harvard Stadium and then to WBPX.

In all, TRC brought in 16 onsite crew members from around the country, as well as three reporters from rowing-content provider JRN, to produce a daily report show featuring the voices of elite athletes and notable figures of the rowing community. It all came together for three full days of covering every possible angle for fans watching at home or on LED displays onsite.

“There would be no way to use a mobile unit for Head Of The Charles,” notes Grams. “I think that’s unique to rowing. Our schedules are so tight that the cost of having the luxury [of a mobile unit] doesn’t add up. Instead, we put everything in Pelican cases and ship them across the country; then we set it up in here, tear it down, and send it back. And we do it all over again the next time.”

TRC’s camera complement included eight Canon units for primary coverage.

The Multiview Experience: Dolby OptiView Revolutionizes How To Watch Rowing

Using Dolby OptiView technology, TRC enabled viewers to watch all six live feeds simultaneously from start to finish on their streaming device via TRC.live across all three days of the regatta. To extend onsite engagement to fans in attendance, the multiview service was also delivered to an LED display on the Charles.

In a first for live rowing coverage, viewers could build their own viewing setup featuring six live video streams from prominent checkpoints on the Charles River.

“In previous years, you could pull up only one view at a time,” explained de Neergaard. “If you are a parent watching your kid come down the course, you have to jump between multiple streams to follow them. Now, with the multiview experience, we’re able to give you six streams at once so you can watch your kid’s race from start to finish without having to jump around to all these different feeds.”

Dolby OptiView delivered the live distribution via its HESP protocol, ensuring consistent glass-to-glass low latency across all devices. “This is a great use case that shows how multiview experiences with low delay and synchronized video and data can create highly engaging experiences,” says Paul Boustead, VP, product and business strategy, Dolby OptiView. “We are spending a lot of time at Dolby working with our customers: building engaging experiences.

To extend onsite engagement to fans in attendance, the multiview service was also delivered to an LED display on the Charles.

“We’re excited to be part of an experience on the river,” he continues, “where people can watch what’s happening from their phone or on the jumbotron with multiple views, multiple camera angles, or multiple boats at the same time. It has been an amazing partnership, and we are trying to work with other customers on creating similarly engaging experiences as well as monetization opportunities.”

Using the Dolby OptiView API, the TRC team was also able to instantly create Key Plays to allow viewers to catch up on action they may have missed — similar to the feature that Prime Video provides on Thursday Night Football.

“Using the data we have and Dolby’s [OptiView] API, we can just click a couple buttons to select clips we want and push them out of the platform,” said de Neergaard. “We also have the ability to generate playlists and just play back all the races as people come across, which is something athletes are going to enjoy: they just find themselves, click their boat, and can see every time they are on camera.”

Due to the challenging layout of the course, “there would be no way to use a mobile unit for Head Of The Charles,” according to Grams.

Integrations with RegattaMaster and CrewTimer brought timing and results directly into the player, allowing fans to jump instantly to their race and see results in real time.

“We’ve worked tirelessly with our timing vendors, Crew Timer and Regatta Master, to bring in their timing data,” said de Neergaard. “I think this is unique to rowing: we have timing data for every single time [a competitor] crosses the camera on all of our waypoints. As a result, we can show you real-time results throughout each race, and it allows athletes to find their footage without having to scrub through eight hours of video over three days.”

de Neergaard: “It’s a 3½-mile course. A lot can happen in 3½ miles when you’re staggering boats every five seconds to start.”

In addition to the multiview experience, TRC debuted a new interactive course map and, for the first time, integrated sponsor ads and messages directly into the livestream.

The TRC team sent live feeds to NBC10 Boston, which also livestreamed races throughout Saturday and Sunday, and the Head Of The Charles Regatta YouTube channel.

“We all want to make sure that the event is as publicly viewable as possible,” said de Neergaard. “We’re happy to provide those streams for ingest [on NBC10 Boston and YouTube], but TRC.live platform is what sets the Head Of The Charles apart this year. The viewing experience is going to be unlike anything fans have seen and, I think, will add a whole new level of excitement and understanding.”

The TRC Odyssey: Head Of The Charles Offers Chance To Look Back — and Forward

The Rowing Channel has grown considerably since being acquired by Watersports Broadcasting last December.

“We’ve significantly expanded our platform over the past year,” noted de Neergaard. “The 2025 Head Of The Charles showcased that growth. Many of us have been at Rowing Channel for years, and it has been amazing to see the growth [of the platform] after we’ve put in so much time and effort. It’s humbling to see the culmination of all our work in the world’s largest regatta with a live show fully produced by us on our platform.”

In all, TRC brought in 16 onsite crew members from around the country, as well as three reporters from rowing-content provider JRN.

Calling last month’s production a true team effort, he notes key contributors: Dolby’s Stephen Rosone and Jaye Sosa; WBC’s Daniel McArdle, Bret Plamer, Dylan Hooper-Goetinck, Grant Coultrup, Whitney Powell, and Matthew Ludlam; timing partners Regatta Master’s Steve Jensen and Crewtimer’s Glenn Engel; and Head Of The Charles’s Tori Stevens and Brendan Mulvey.

This year’s Head Of The Charles marks a watershed moment for The Rowing Channel, which began as a grassroots effort to bring a few races online for friends and family more than a decade ago. Today, its professional-grade productions reach audiences around the world. Yet, even as the technology, scale, and ambition have grown, the mission has remained refreshingly simple: to share the sport they love with the people who love it most.

“It was never supposed to go this far,” says Grams. “Twelve years ago, when this first started, we did it just to make our old coach at Orange Coast College happy. Over all these years, the one thing we always wanted to do is just make people happy; let a mom or dad or grandparent back home be able to watch their kid row and, hopefully, win. That’s still our primary goal, but to be able to produce and [distribute it] at this high quality is something I never imagined and I know we’re all very proud of.”