Reviewing ESPN's Wimbledon Coverage

In a total coincidence, the day that I planned to write this post happened to be the very same day that Variety reported the price of ESPN+ will be going from $6.99 to $9.99.

As multiple reaction pieces have noted, the price raise isn’t insulting when compared to other sports streaming services, and the Hulu/Disney+/ESPN+ bundle remains unchanged for the moment, making it by far the smarter purchase (which is certainly much of the point for Disney).

That said, The Mouse vaulting the price does feel pretty annoying, given the issues that have plagued the service for about a decade still remain. In the years before the Streaming Arms Race, when ESPN3/WatchESPN was a free supplement to being an ESPN subscriber, it was one thing for streams to be ~90 seconds behind live action, or take a while to load or skip ahead/back. Once the paywall went up though and became a separate subscription, the fact that *ahem* other internet sources continued to be of higher quality truly became unacceptable. And yet, years later, that remains the situation, indicating that those flaws will likely never be fixed.

On to Wimbledon. Or rather, back to Wimbledon:

-The #1 overall note for ESPN’s coverage is that the tournament is still very much valued by the network. This seemed in question given the remote production and paywalled night sessions of the Australian Open, as well as that ESPN allowed the American Masters to leave their umbrella (which they likely don’t regret in the slightest, given the recent absences of the Big 3 and Serena).

Instead, ESPN treated Wimbledon like a crown jewel, the last big event before the NBA/NHL seasons give way to the August Dead Zone and 300 million hours of the Little League World Series.

Coverage started at actual first ball, nothing was a honeytrap for ESPN+, and actual details were often provided on the news ticker, a contrast to the embarrassing “Player X defeats Player Y in straight sets” pattern that has largely become the ESPN standard in recent years.

-To continue on that note, for as badly as Disney/ESPN are trying to drive online subscriptions, the contrast was stark between how casually their hosts mentioned that a certain match could be found on ESPN+ to Tennis Channel’s hosts being zapped by shock collars if they didn’t mention TC+ every 15 minutes.

That made for better coverage not just with less pandering, but also in breadth of coverage. ESPN definitely wasn’t perfect, but their bopping around to various ends of sets and crucial moments was much more diverse than TC, which tends to focus on center court and pull an “aw shucks, it’s too bad that our hands are tied and you have to go to TC+ to see the fifth set there” act.

-Caroline Wozniacki’s reps on TC paid off, as she debuted on ESPN in the first week of Wimbledon and seemed much more settled, despite often being cast into a lead role with Chris Evert not arriving until the later rounds. Her line about facing Alize Cornet as kids (“I played Cornet for the first time when I was 8 years old and she was limping back then as well”) was the line of the tournament.

Woz isn’t perfect but hopefully she impressed ESPN brass enough for them to have her supplant Evert as #1 WTA analyst. Obviously, best wishes that things continue to go well with Evert’s recovery from cancer. With that said, she continues to say baffling things on air, notably capping off the women’s tournament by saying she doesn’t consider Iga Swiatek to be a dominant #1, despite Swiatek matching the tour’s longest win streak in 30+ years.

-Evert’s not the worst analyst though, an “honor” that goes to Alexandra Stevenson. At various times in the tournament, you could practically see Darren Cahill and James Blake screaming internally at the desk as Stevenson took forever to make fairly basic points.

Stevenson has been an issue for a while, but it hit new heights at this tournament and no longer feels too harsh to say after her weirdly personal take on Harmony Tan, which was in part “No way. No way. Come on. Harmony Tan? No offense to Harmony Tan, but come on. This is not going to be Serena’s last match.” (h/t to Randy Walker/@TennisPublisher for the word-for-word quote).

Tan would go on to win her next two matches in straight sets to reach the fourth round.

-Usually in the discussion for worst analyst but surprisingly competent lately: John McEnroe. ESPN’s reduced tennis schedule makes it feel like even more of a future match for Andy Roddick to hopefully overcome his travel allergy and become the lead ESPN ATP analyst (come on Andy, it’s just two or three majors!), but at least Johnny Mac wasn’t the same level of liability as in the past.

His end of tournament take on governments not allowing Novak Djokovic to play was wildly off-track, but the McEnroe Brothers called their most solid match in recent years when they commentated the Nadal/Fritz thriller together, with Chris Fowler surprisingly teaming with Cahill to call what little aired of the Kyrgios/Garin match.

-ESPN took the Rybakina/Jabeur final seriously, with little snark across their various shows about a fairly anonymous final. However, they missed airing a point in the final, something that should never, ever happen.

-Credit to the network and Pam Shriver, as they prefaced the Nadal/Fritz match by noting Shriver passed along that Nadal hadn’t been hitting any serves in practice, a notable observation given his ab tape/tear hadn’t factored into the tournament by that point.

-Coverage-wise, ESPN’s biggest blunder was airing a Stefanos Tsitsipas desk interview over competitive first sets for Nadal and Swiatek, merely the best players on each tour this year and champions at the previous major. Making matters worse, Chris McKendry steered the interview into discussing cars, basketball and Tsitsipas’ beard. Infinite facepalm emojis.

As embarrassing as the content was, the worst part remains that ESPN/TC refuse to just record these desk interviews and air them later. It remains baffling because those interviews would actually be quite useful in filling time as the schedule thins out late in the day.

-Strategy-wise, the most confounding bit of the entire tournament was ESPN’s allergy to the hype-worthy Alcaraz-Sinner match, and to Carlitos in general. The best and most thrilling young star in the men’s game, and a magnet for compelling matches, he simply wasn’t a focal point during the fortnight (a Wimbledon column cannot legally be published without use of the word “fortnight”). For instance, while Alcaraz-Otte wasn’t close, and Norrie-Johnson was US vs UK, the latter was certainly not riveting enough to pass up continuing to invest in Alcaraz as a long-term household name.