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ESPN reportedly close to acquiring all U.S. Open coverage rights
The U.S. Open has been televised by CBS since 1968. (David Walberg/SI)
Sports Business Daily reports ESPN is close to acquiring all coverage rights for the U.S. Open beginning in 2015, moving the tournament coverage exclusively to cable. CBS has owned some portion of the coverage rights since 1968.
ESPN's pitch to the USTA was of a Wimbledon-style deal, where ESPN picks up rights to the entire tournament, bringing another major sports championship to cable. ESPN has a lot of college football commitments in the fall, but has committed to carry the semis and finals on ESPN. Their plan includes TV Everywhere rights, which allow it to stream live matches to authenticated users.
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As Sports Business Daily reports, CBS has struggled in its coverage of the tournament's final weekend. Rain pushed the men's final to Monday the last five years, forcing CBS to scramble its schedule for a programing window that often went up against the opening night of the NFL's Monday Night Football. With the extended length of the men's finals in recent years, the coverage often bounced around from CBS to ESPN2, even to ESPN Classic.
The USTA announced in December that it would do away with the traditional (and CBS-driven) "Super Saturday" format that saw both men's semifinals and the women's final played on Saturday and the men's final on Sunday. Starting this year, both the men and women will have a day off between the semifinals and finals, with the women's final moved to Sunday and the men's final on Monday. The schedule change is not permanent. Should the ESPN deal go through, expect the schedule to revert to a Sunday men's final. The network won't want a Monday final to run up against its own Monday Night Football franchise.
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Contributor, SI.com Nguyen is a freelance writer for SI.com, providing full coverage of professional tennis both on and off the court. Her content has become a must-read for fans and insiders to stay up-to-date with a sport that rarely rests. She has appeared on radio and TV talk shows all over the world and is one of the co-hosts of No Challenges Remaining, a weekly podcast available on iTunes. Nguyen graduated from the University of California, Irvine in 1999 and received a law degree from the University of California, Davis in 2002. She lives in the Bay Area.