The Sport Thread

Looks like the US Open on Amazon Prime is 720/30. However they're using a British commentator.

Courtside pres


On-screen graphics




Com cam


(that's Jim Courier on co-comms)

It appears you can only live-rewind by an hour, and I don't think there's any on-demand.

Getting quite a bit of buffering plus the firestick decided to reboot itself meaning I meant the last 3-4 games of the first set.

No buffering here, but I'm using a Nvidia Shield with the Prime Video app which is Ethernet connected.

Just remembered actually got the app on this TV too so I'll try that (though it's OK now). Watching sport getting so complicated now though - got more devices than I used to have channels.

Lots of complaints along two common themes:
lack of facility to replay
lack of additional court coverage beyond show courts and one outside courts picks channel

They seem to be slow in adding the highlights programme this morning. They'd said it would be available from 7am.

I've also seen complaints about playback issues ie buffering or picture not synced with sound, but had no issues myself, I suspect most of those are user end

My mum's really pissed off at this, she really enjoys the grand slam tennis, has enjoyed watching it through Eurosport the past few years, couldn't find it on there last night and found out that it's now only on Amazon. She doesn't want to pay more for Amazon Prime, we pay enough for TV as it is, plus she doesn't have a fire stick or a smart TV, so she'd have to watch it through the computer or tablet. The fact it's stuck at 30p video (why can't they offer 50/60p? It's fast moving sport!) would probably make it a pretty tiring watch as well even through the TV.

The bbc showed amazon prime, pics from it, it just look unacceptable I am sorry to say

In terms of the production, I assume the main channel is being produced in New York with all the presenters and commentators on site, while the outside court picks channel is from London with commentators at home, rather like Eurosport 2 when they cover Grand Slams. The three show court channels have world feed commentary and don't have the Prime DOG on them.

Amazon's team is
Studio main presenter: Catherine Whitaker (day), Karthi Gnanasegaram (night)
Studio pundits: Daniela Hantuchová, Greg Rusedski
Reporter/interviewer: Anna Whiteley
New York commentators (heard so far): Mark Petchey, Annabel Croft, Sam Smith, Jim Courier, Mary Carillo
London based commentators: Barry Cowan, Sue Thearle, Arvind Parmar



Sam Smith has also been heard on world feed commentary as has Virginia Wade (lives in NY apparently). They're not exclusively using American commentators.

In the Amazon press release they also mentioned Robbie Koenig who I've only heard on world feed so far, and Nick Lester who I've not heard at all yet.

From London = IMG.
You would assume its an IMG production for (Amazon) Prime, given there's a couple of the usual suspects from the same company produced Wimbledon Championship Live in-house TV channel for the aforementioned tournament.

It's being shown on 'Sport24' the airline and cruise ship sports channel, which is run by IMG, so you'd assume the feeds from Flushing Meadows end up in Stockley Park via the fibers and daisy chain around the outlets from there.

US Tennis association going for the money rather than the exposure again, signing up with Amazon.

Really surprised the USTA didn't offer up rights to show a hour long next day highlights package for Eurosport/Sky/BT/ITV to fight over as well as the live coverage from the brown box delivery merchants.

You can see the difference between the two right now, as BT Sport 3 currently has the UEFA world feed score graphic, while Sport 2 has the BT Sport version, which is smaller and not as brightly coloured as the chunkier world feed version.

Yes, surely it would make sense to have at least SOMETHING on broadcast TV?