Wimbledon and NEP UK agree 4-year broadcast delivery partnership

Wimbledon Broadcast Services (WBS) and NEP UK are to continue their long-standing technical broadcast delivery partnership for the Wimbledon Championships, after agreeing a new four-year extension to the partnership.

NEP has provided host coverage of Wimbledon since 2014, including highlights such as the Grand Slam debut of Emma Raducanu as a wildcard entry in 2021.

NEP UK has also provided both host and unilateral coverage to the BBC, and other broadcasters for Wimbledon.

Working closely with the All England Club, NEP UK used 100+ camera positions, and 40 EVS servers to record and replay every ball that is played, producing coverage of every court. The feeds were then distributed by NEP to all rights holding broadcasters onsite, and locally passed on to IMG and EBU and other rights-holding broadcasters around the world.

Behind-the-scenes

Every match across all 18 courts was televised during this year’s Championships for the first time, including centre court in UHD HDR. 11 courts at Wimbledon were crewed by camera-operators, while seven used a hybrid of operators and NEP’s AI-driven, auto-follow camera system Tr-Ace System.

Sony 3500 Cameras were deployed across site to capture all the action live in UHD from the courts. All courts have been delivered in 1080 SDR 709 with Centre Court also available in 1080p HDR 2020 to deliver the optimum broadcast quality experience for fans at home. NEP’s two flagship units – Venus and Ceres – were used on Centre and No.1 Court.

NEP’s Tr-Ace system (which it acquired as part of its acquisition of Fletcher Group) sees robotic camera heads tracking all the action on the court. It uses a mixture of image recognition and LIDAR technologies to automatically track the players on court, meaning that one operator can control all the cameras as well as mix the show at the same time.

The Tr-Ace technology allows the operator to simply tap the person of interest on the screen and then select if they want a wide, mid, or close-up shot of the player selected - from there, the pan, tilt, zoom and focus functions are all automatic.

Creative Technology, a sister company of NEP, was onsite during the event to run the full audio RF operation; with staff using talkback, in-ear monitors, and Radio Mic coverage across the 14-acre site to ensure that it all runs smoothly. As well as fulfilling the audio coverage, Creative Technology was also running the screens operating across Wimbledon including all scoreboards on court and around the campus. As well as screens for the Queue and The Hill.

NEP UK is aiming to complete a carbon-neutral delivery of Wimbledon as part of its extended partnership with WBS – all NEP staff have participated in Albert’s Sustainable Production training. NEP UK has also recently achieved its ISO 14001 Certification for environmental management.

Richard Lancaster, technical project manager, NEP UK, said: “It has been an incredible privilege to work with Wimbledon Broadcast Services (WBS) to deliver the technical broadcast facilities and delivery for the world’s most prestigious tennis tournament. NEP is proud to have worked in partnership on the technical implementation and delivery for more games than ever before.”

Paul Davies, head of broadcast, production and media rights, added: “We are delighted to continue our long-standing partnership with NEP as part of Wimbledon Broadcast Services as we look to continue to deliver outstanding standards of broadcast coverage, and the ultimate viewing experience of The Championships.”

Simon Moorhead, managing director, NEP UK Broadcast Services, NEP UK, said: “NEP UK are all incredibly proud of our long and successful partnership with the All England Club in delivering The Championships. This is one of the most prestigious sporting events in the world, that has the eyes of the world watching. Our partnership completely transcends the pure provision of technical broadcast equipment and services. It is about our proven, collective understanding and collaboration in the pursuit of quality in all parts of the process, and our absolute commitment to provide a rock-solid operation, with agility and flexibility, whilst continuously innovating and improving. I am incredibly proud of the entire NEP team who work tirelessly to deliver Wimbledon and I, like the rest of the NEP team, are excited and honored to have been awarded this new contract from 2023 to 2026.”