Watching the U.S. Open Tennis Championships’ women’s semifinals last night, as well as the earlier rounds of the tournament, ESPN’s announcing and courtside talent made me think of Paris in springtime and the French Open. What?
Let me explain. Tennis basically has two broadcasters in the USA – ESPN and Tennis Channel. ESPN, which once had extensive coverage of tennis, now has three of the Slams: the U.S. and Australian Opens, and Wimbledon, or the Championships as the grass court spectacle refers to itself. That’s it for ESPN. Tennis Channel, owned by Sinclair but on the market , covers nearly all of the non-Slam events, which numbers over a hundred.
Then there is the late-May starting French Open–again like Wimbledon, the organizers refer to the tourney by a different name, Roland Garros. For years, Tennis Channel covered much of the event, but NBC Sports kept its toes in the tennis waters by broadcasting the middle and last weekends. After 41 years, NBC bowed out earlier this year .
In its place arrived Warner Bros. Discovery, which reportedly is paying an eye-popping $650 million over 10 years for all the broadcast rights, beating out a far smaller bid from Tennis Channel. WBD will televise the tournament on its Turner networks as well as TruTV and stream on Max.
This brings me back to why I was thinking of Paris while watching tennis from Flushing. Which way will WBD go in terms of broadcast talent? WBD is a new player in the sport here (Turner actually broadcast Wimbledon from 2000 to 2002), though its Eurosport division has rights to the event in dozens of European countries. WBD could always tap into this talent pool, though they would be new faces to the American tennis viewer.
ESPN has long had many of the same voices covering the sport: John and Patrick McEnroe, Brad Gilbert, Mary Joe Fernandez, Pam Shriver, Chris McKendry, Chris Evert, Chris Fowler, James Blake, Jason Goodall, and Cliff Drysdale (I know I missed a few). ESPN recently has also been using some talent that cut their teeth at TC, including current players Chris Eubanks and Nick Kyrgios (both are fantastic courtside reporters).
So will WBD try to replicate that ecosystem, or will the broadcaster go for a different vibe? The announcers are not full-time with ESPN and are free to take their talents to other events. The McEnroes announced the French Open for years on NBC, keeping their voices in all four Slams.
A WBD spokesman said planning is underway for the French Open, but beyond that he did not offer anything more.
John McEnroe’s agent, Gary Swain, emailed, “ Consistent with our position over the 40 years I have represented John, he prefers we just keep getting the job done and not talk about his business to the media.”
Would WBD go outside the box? Charles Barkley in Paris commenting on tennis? Now that might be must-watch TV (pretty much everything with Barkley is, other than his ill-fated CNN news show). It is unlikely in Year 1 because the French Open coincides with the end of the NBA conference finals and NBA Finals. WBD airs one of the conference finals.
WBD is losing rights to the NBA after next season–barring a surprising victory in its long-shot court battle against the NBA to reclaim its rights. Whether Barkley stays with WBD–he has had different takes on that over the past few months–is unknown, so he might not even be with WBD in May of 2026.
Ernie Johnson actually was part of the Turner crew that broadcast Wimbledon over two decades ago, so assuming he remains with WBD, he is a likely candidate to be involved with the French Open.
Patrick Crakes, a sports TV consultant, said he does not expect WBD to go too far outside of the traditional tennis announcing box, at least in year one.
“They may push some but I’m not sure a radical approach will be their route in year one. I’d expect some new faces though and lots of “cutting edge” production in an attempt to freshen up the French Open while not flipping any tables.”
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