US Open 2009 Sports Technology Blog

USTA, CBS Sports Work Together to Stream Men’s Final

A rain-delayed Final means an extra day of work for the USOpen.org staff -- and a great way for people at work to watch the Final match.

No one at CBS Sports was thrilled with the rain delay that moved the men’s singles final match to Monday afternoon – except maybe the folks at CBSSports.com. Thanks to a quickly-formed agreement between CBS Sports and the USTA, Monday’s final will be streamed on USOpen.org – the only CBS broadcast window that will be streamed online during the course of the two-week tournament.

“We went through this process a year ago and provided live streaming after a rain delay pushed the final back a day,” explains Phil Green, USTA senior director of advanced media. “Going into this one, if the men’s final was going to move, I think based on past experience and how successful it was, the assumption coming in was that we’ll be able to get this done.”

Get it done they did, and quickly, too. As soon as the announcement was made on Friday night that the men’s final would move to Monday, the television schedule was updated to reflect that the final would also be streamed on USOpen.org. The stream will flow through the U.S. Open’s player, but it will be provided in partnership with CBS.

“The interactive media console that we’ve been using throughout the tournament has CBSSports.com branding on it now,” Green says. “Just for the men’s final we’ll include in the header ‘In Association with CBSSports.com,’ so it’s a combined effort. It’s a huge initiative for all of us and it’s the same way we did it last year.”

As was the case in 2008, CBS is working with the USTA to promote awareness and drive traffic through CBSSports.com, CBS.com, and all of CBS’ other online properties. In return, the USTA has tweaked the player so that CBS can better track the users who log on.

“Working with IBM, we created a separate version of the player for CBS to link to,” Green explains. “It’s just different from a traffic reporting standpoint, so that we can better track what’s coming from CBS so they’re aware of it. Because we’re streaming this together, it’s important that they’re able to track what they’re driving.”