ESPN will develop a new series based on the life and career of legendary tennis star Serena Williams, the network announced Tuesday at its upfront presentation.

The multi-part In The Arena: Serena Williams series will chronicle Williams’ on the court success, winning 23 Grand Slams titles over a more than two decade span, as well as her personal challenges and achievements. Williams appeared at the New York presentation to make the announcement. 

Following on the success of the network’s Man In the Arena: Tom Brady, The series will track Serena’s personal and generational journey from phenom to icon, re-examining decisive matches, formative moments, heartbreak and glory along the way, said network officials. 

In The Arena: Serena Williams will be co-produced by ESPN, Religion of Sports, Tom Brady’s 199 Productions, and Williams and Caroline Currier’s Nine Two Six Productions. 

ESPN also announced it will bring The Pat McAfee Show daily sports talk show to the network as part of a new multi-year agreement.

McAfee, who currently serves as a college football analyst on ESPN’s College GameDay, will bring his show – currently streaming on YouTube – live weekdays to ESPN, the ESPN YouTube Channel, the ESPN App and ESPNPlus beginning this fall, according to the network. 

“Pat is a proven talent … he and his team have built the Pat McAfee Show into one of the most engaging programs in sports and all of media,” ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro said in a statement prior to the upfront. “ It’s a destination for athlete interviews and breaking news, and the centerpiece of a growing community of sports fans. We’re honored to bring Pat and the show to ESPN through a multifaceted, multiplatform approach.” 

Serena Williams' likely final U.S. Open appearance was watched by a record audience for an ESPN tennis match, the sports service reported Tuesday.

More than 4.6 million viewers tuned in to ESPN on September 2 to watch Williams, who last month announced the U.S. Open would most likely be her final tennis competition, lose her match against Ajla Tomljanovich in a three-set thriller. The mark is the most ever for a tennis match in ESPN's 43-year history, beating the previous record of 3.9 million viewers for ESPN's 2012 coverage of the Wimbledon men's final between Roger Federer and Andy Murray.

The match peaked with 6.9 million viewers in the 10:15 p.m. quarter hour, according to the network. Overall, Williams' three televised U.S. Open matches helped ESPN average 1.1 million viewers across its first five days of U.S. Open telecasts, a 101% increase compared to 2021 and the most-viewed, first five days of the U.S. Open on record for the ESPN Networks, according to the company. 

ESPN will continue with coverage of the U.S. Open throughout the week, with the finals of the men's and women's championships airing this weekend. ■  

DirecTV is taking a big swing covering the 126th Roland Garros French Open tennis tournament.

Starting Sunday, the satellite TV provider will have seven separate channels dedicated to live action. 

DirecTV is also planning to air one women’s semifinal and one men’s semifinal and the men’s final and women’s final in 4K ultra high definition produced by NBC Sports.

“DirecTV is always looking to create the most immersive experience possible for all sports fans,” said Chief Content Officer Rob Thun. “Watching some of tennis’ all-time greats competing against an exciting field with new rising stars, culminating in semis and finals captured in brilliant 4K UHD from the red clay, is just about as good as it gets.”

DirecTV’s “Roland Garros Experience” will be anchored by a mosaic channel showing simultaneous actions, with channels focused on the match play on the Phillipe Chartier, Suzanne Lenglen and Simone Matthieu courts located outside Paris.

Viewers will also be able to access several on-demand enhancements to enable Grand Slam fans to call up up-to-the-minute match results; an onscreen ticker with real-time scores; the updated women’s and men’s tournament draw; individual player bios; and recent results.

Beyond DirecTV’s 4K coverage, the Tennis Channel, available to DirecTV subscribers, will also be providing French Open content. ■

Most sports fans know Serena Williams as arguably the best tennis player ever, but HBO’s new documentary series Being Serena serves up a very intimate look at the personal side of Williams that very few people have seen.

HBO, which is coming off its April Andre The Giant documentary -- the network's most successful sports-themed documentary in 15 years -- delivers a five-part documentary series that follows Williams from the 2017 Australian Open, which she won while pregnant, through her health complications in delivering her daughter, to her determination to get back on the court and reclaim her crown as the top tennis player in the world.

On the tennis court Serena is to be feared, dominating the court and staring down defeat in a very business-like manner. Very early in the documentary however, Williams is shown to be prone to fear and insecurity as she questions whether she can balance being a loving and strong mother to her daughter while being the driven, competitive and successful athlete she’s been since she and her sister Venus arrived on the tennis scene some two decades ago.

In a poignant moment of reflection during the first two hours of the series, Williams fully showcases her doubts about her tennis future while at the same time her unyielding desire to compete by simply stating, “I don’t know if there is anything left for me in tennis, but I know I’m not done yet.”

Sports fans looking for a documentary on Williams’ tennis career will be disappointed as match highlights are few and far between. Instead, the documentary spends most of the time chronicling Williams’ off the court life – including the birth of her daughter as well as preparing for her wedding to Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian -- in often intimate detail that at times might make some viewers a bit squeamish.

Overall Being Serena offers viewers with fascinating insight into one of the greatest athletes of our time.

Tennis Channel air live Serena Williams’ return to the court with its U.S. Fed Cup team coverage this weekend, the network said Thursday.

Williams, who last competed in the 2017 Australian Open before taking time off due to her pregnancy, will join sister Venus, CoCo Vandeweghe and Lauren Davis on the US Fed Cup team when it competes against the Netherlands. Tennis Channel said it will cover live two singles matches on Feb. 10, as well as two singles matches and a doubles match on Sunday.

Last year the U.S. team won the Fed Cup championship against Belarus.

Discovery Communications said its Eurosport network has secured a five-year deal for live simulcast coverage of the Wimbledon Gentlemen’s and Ladies Singles finals and daily 90-minute highlight shows for the duration of the storied tennis tourney.

The deal gives Eurosport rights in the U.K. for all four Grand Slam tennis events – The French Open, The Australian Open and the U.S. Open are the others. The Wimbledon agreement is in line with British agency Ofcom’s Listed Events regulations, which allows a secondary broadcaster to acquire certain rights alongside the primary broadcaster, which in the case of The Championships is the BBC.

“It is fantastic to offer fans the chance to watch one of the most iconic events in British sport on Eurosport for the first time,” said Discovery Networks UK and Ireland EVP and MD Susanna Dinnage in a statement.” Adding the Wimbledon rights means we now have live coverage of all four top tournaments and cements our position as the Home of Grand Slam Tennis in the U.K.”

Eurosport’s Rob Curling will host the nightly highlights program in the U.K. from the All England Club from 10 pm every day of the tournament.

In addition to the four Glam Slams, Eurosport broadcasts the Davis Cup, known as the ‘World Cup of Tennis’ and the five British grass court tournaments that take place in the lead up to The Championships, Wimbledon.

The BBC will continue to broadcast continuous daily live coverage of The Championships in the UK across BBC 1, BBC 2 and online, and remains the AELTC’s primary UK broadcast partner for the term 2016-2020 inclusive.

Tennis Channel has selected Apple TV as its first digital streaming TV partner, launching on the platform in time for the Australian Open, the start of the sport’s Grand Slam season.

The move gives Tennis Channel subscribers online access to the linear channel feed as well as daily highlights, interviews and other segments from daily show Australian Open Today.

Also included on the Apple TV platform is the network’s digital subscription service, Tennis Channel Plus; digital subscribers with Apple TV will be able to watch live Australian Open coverage during the first eight days of the two-week competition. Starting at 7 p.m. (ET) each evening, digital viewers will have access to an additional live court stream that will not be available on Tennis Channel.

Tennis Channel Plus gives viewers access to more than 450 other live matches from more than 40 tournaments worldwide, including the French Open. Archived matches and other programming are also available on-demand to digital subscribers. Tennis Channel Plus subscriptions are $69.99 per year via Apple TV, the network said.

"Our partnership with Apple TV marks a continued progression in our drive to remain on the cutting-edge of media technology for viewers and the tennis community," said Patrick Wilson, senior vice president of distribution, Tennis Channel.

Tennis Channel first launched a TV everywhere app in 2013 and last year rolled it out to 75% of its subscriber base, the network said. It subsequently launched Tennis Channel Plus as its digital subscription service in May 2014; it has been integrated into the network’s TV everywhere app.

The Australian Open started yesterday (Jan. 19) in Melbourne.

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NEW YORK -- The two-year promotional partnership of Twitter and tennis’s U.S. Open had helped spread word of the tournament via “instant highlights,” something the overseers want to continue.

“I think you will see instant highlights continue, and it’ll just be a matter of what form or fashion that takes,” Nicole Jeter West, senior director, ticketing and digital strategy for the United States Tennis Association, said at a session during The Business of Live Television Summit Tuesday in New York City. “But we are all committed to the fact that this is working for us, it’s working for our fans and our partners.”

In 2013, an epic rally between Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic in the men’s final was a milestone moment in the USTA and Twitter’s efforts to send almost real-time video snippets out via promoted tweets, in an effort to get people to tune into the broadcast and expose them to a sponsor’s message (in this case Heineken) just by opening up a tweet targeted to them.

West said while that 54-shot rally was happening, she was hearing from Heineken and other media partners about getting images from it out on Twitter.

“We were able to get it out within seconds of the actual shot happening, and it blew up on Twitter and became quite viral,” West told moderator Dade Hayes, the executive editor of Broadcasting & Cable.

“Instantly there were about 10,000 retweets,” Mike Park, product & content partnerships for Twitter Amplify, the social firm’s ad platform.

“There’s no better tune-in message than to say this amazing 54-shot rally is taking place,” West said.

In 2014, West said, USTA scaled back on the ad messaging in favor of getting messages out more quickly and getting more people to open the tweets. Park said Twitter was accommodating pre-roll ads of up to 6 seconds in length, which works well with Vine, Twitter’s short-video platform. “We are continuing to look at what scales for advertisers and marketers and users,” he said.

She said some of the Twitter Amplify messages drove tune-in to events that were being streamed, as opposed to solely promoting live-TV viewing.