List of French Open broadcasters

France

France Télévisions and Eurosport hold the broadcast rights to the French Open until 2020.

United Kingdom

BBC began broadcasting French Open finals annually in 1981[1] (often in their Grandstand or Sunday Grandstand programmes). The BBC's coverage continued until 2011. ITV Sport have televised French Open in United Kingdom from 2012 onwards. Eurosport began broadcasting the French Open in 1989.[2] Eurosport still hold the broadcasting rights to show the French Open in the United Kingdom.[3] The bulk of the ITV daily coverage is broadcast on ITV4 although both singles finals plus other weekend matches are shown on ITV. John Inverdale hosts the coverage. Commentators include Nick Mullins, Jonathan Overend, Mark Petchey, Sam Smith, Jim Courier, Fabrice Santoro and Anne Keothavong. Studio presentation for the French Open on Eurosport is hosted by Barbara Schett sometimes joined by Mats Wilander. Commentators in the UK, include Simon Reed, Chris Bradnam, Nick Lester, Jason Goodall, Jo Durie, Frew McMillan, Arvind Parmar and Chris Wilkinson.

United States

NBC's coverage of the French Open began in 1975.[4] Tennis Channel owns pay television rights to the tournament. Coverage of morning window (U.S. time) matches were sub-licensed to ESPN for broadcast by ESPN2 from 2007 through 2015.[5] In August 2015, ESPN announced that it would discontinue its sub-licensing and drop coverage of the French Open beginning in 2016, with network staff citing that because of the structure of the arrangement, its coverage "did not fit our successful model at the other three Majors"—where ESPN is the exclusive rightsholder.[5] Tennis Channel chose to retain these rights under its new owner Sinclair Broadcast Group, nearly doubling the amount of coverage Tennis Channel will air from Roland Garros.[6][7]

Other than a three-year stint on CBS, NBC has remained the American television network home of the French Open since 1983. Since acquiring rights to the Indianapolis 500 in 2019, NBC's coverage begins on Memorial Day, the second day of the tournament; the network provides coverage windows on the holiday and the second weekend in the afternoon U.S. time. These windows consist of exclusive tape-delayed matches from earlier in the day, but any ongoing matches at the window's start are shown live to their conclusion. The later men's and women's semifinals are broadcast live on NBC in the Eastern Time Zone and tape-delayed in others, but since 2017 these matches are also simulcast on NBCSN to allow nationwide live coverage. Finals are live nationwide.[8]

Year Network Play-by-play Color commentators
2007 NBC Ted Robinson John McEnroe and Mary Carillo
2006 NBC Ted Robinson John McEnroe and Mary Carillo
2005 NBC Ted Robinson John McEnroe and Mary Carillo

Notes
  • The 1978 tournament was a part of a series of "eight syndicated telecasts, produced by the independent Hughes Sports Network and sold a commercial stations on an individual market basis by Taft Broadcasting. Six more tournaments are scheduled on Hughes: The Italian and US Opens, Washington Star International, Canadian Open, U.S. Pro Championships and Australian Open, all slotted for 6 to 8 p.m. Saturdays and 5 to 7 p.m. Sundays, Eastern time.
  • Live coverage of Men's final began in the early 1980s. Meanwhile, live Coverage of the Woman's final began in 2003.
  • John McEnroe had been the lead analyst on all men's finals on both NBC and CBS since 1995.
  • Dick Enberg's last tournaments for NBC were in 1999. Beginning in 2000, Ted Robinson started doing NBC's play-by-play on both the French and Wimbledon. Robinson would in return be succeeded by Mike Tirico and Dan Hicks in 2019.
  • In 2007, Tennis Channel won the cable rights to the French Open. ESPN2's coverage since 2007 is a sub-lease of rights from Tennis Channel, and also included a reciprocal sub-lease of ESPN2's Australian Open coverage to Tennis Channel.

See also

References
  1. "Sunday Grandstand, BBC Genome". genome.ch.bbc.co.uk.
  2. "The Guardian (TV listings), 7 June 1989". newspapers.com.
  3. "French Open to stay on ITV until 2021". ITV Press Centre. 6 June 2014. Retrieved 8 June 2014.
  4. Fang, Ken (23 May 2013). "NBC Begins Coverage of The 2013 French Open This Sunday". Fang's Bites. Archived from the original on 8 December 2013. Retrieved 26 May 2013.
  5. "ESPN drops the French Open, NBCSN could step in". Awful Announcing. Retrieved 3 August 2015.
  6. Umstead, R. Thomas (14 March 2016). "Tennis Channel Extends French Open Pay TV Rights". Multichannel News. Archived from the original on 15 September 2016. Retrieved 20 September 2020.
  7. Ourand, John & Kaplan, Daniel, - (3 August 2015). "ESPN bids French Open adieu after 13 years". Sports Business Journal. Retrieved 16 March 2016.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  8. "French Open TV Schedule 2018". Sports Media Watch. 19 May 2016.


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