In depth: Producing a live streamed tennis event for YouTube & Twitch

By Alex Hyman on Monday 21 April, 2025

In 2023, I wrote an in-depth article about how I led a student media team to generate thousands of views on social media at a UTR Pro Tennis Tour which partnered with the Progress Tour. Fast forward two years to 2025 and heaps more learning in the tank, I wanted to write another 'in depth' article. This time, on how we live streamed the Progress Tour's Novellus Easter Bowl... a new type of event that incorporated world ranked players and Wales' first ever live streamed Dingles tournament!

Barry Fulcher's objectives for the event were these:

Create prize money opportunities so that every player leaves with profit to go and play abroad and fight for world ranking points
Create an engaging product that viewers can watch from home and engage directly with
Experiment with new broadcast ideas such as player commentary, coach courtside analysis and more...

FROM IDEA TO REALITY

Founder of The Progress Tour, Barry Fulcher, and I have discussed a new tennis livestream format for a few years. I think it’s fairly common knowledge that tennis can be pretty boring to watch for hours on end, even when watching some of the world’s best players. So what could spice up things for the viewer?

A minimum 3 camera production is a necessity. Watching tennis on 1 camera is fairly dull from a broadcast perspective. What about the players playing in the event appearing on commentary? This could add a deeper level of insight, something that viewers rarely get from active players because commentators and pundits tend to be former players. A build up show with pre match interviews, pre match analysis and get-to-know videos? This adds a level of production that is only seen on the big channels… but if we were able to produce this for a live tennis event on YouTube, that would draw some attention you’d hope! To add to this, what about in-match entertainment and insight? Understandably, it’s rare we speak to players mid match, but why not give it a go? Personally, I don’t think this works. I don’t think the value you get from it is worth potentially disrupting the rhythm of a player who’s in full flow. However, you have to experiment to find these things out! Finally, utilise YouTube and Twitch's live chat function. After all, engagement is the key word! Viewers could send in questions for commentators and players to answer.

Barry Fulcher (Founder of The Progress Tour) and Alex Hyman

BUILDING A PRODUCTION TEAM... OF STUDENTS

Livestreams don’t happen with just a couple of hands on deck. It needs a team. The bonus is that there are heaps of skilled sport media students at Cardiff Met, the stage for The Progress Tour Easter Bowl event. Myself, along with Technical Lead Peter Irvine, pulled together a production team of 4 rotating camera operators, 1 director, 1 graphics operator and a couple of social media content creators to assist with the social coverage of the event and push people to YouTube.

What was brilliant about this team is that some had never camera operated a tennis match before. Some had never directed a tennis livestream before. Some had never created content for tennis before. By the end of the event, everyone had given it a go. Everyone can now say they have had experience producing a live tennis match.

The production team

THE TESTING PHASE

Moving on to the technical side of the live stream. As it was the first livestream I was responsible in delivering, it was important to me to test the set up and the equipment. This is where Peter Irvine comes in, the live stream director and technician.

3 weeks before the tournament, Peter and I did a reccy of the tennis centre at Cardiff Met University. We worked out a game plan, where cameras would be positioned, where cables would be rigged. We also had the challenge of working around other bookings in the tennis centre. This meant our de-rig at the end of play needed to be quick and efficient. We planned for commentary to be up on the balcony where the view would be delicious and the sound emitted would less likely to be a distraction to the players. Following the reccy, Peter drew up a masterful technical plan.

2 weeks before the tournement, we tested. Cameras were positioned, cables were rigged, computers were up. We wanted to test the quality of the cameras and the ability of VMIX to do what we needed it to do. We also provided an opportunity for the team to get a little more familiar with the filming of tennis and for the director to know the etuiqutte of tennis production and when to cut cameras.

Testing: Owain Clarke (L) and Peter Irvine (R)

After the test day, we were good to go. Graphics needed to be created, running orders needed to be written, tennis needed to be on played but in terms of the technical set up, we were happy and most importantly, Pete was happy!

The next two weeks were filled with preparation work. It included a variation of preparing commentary notes for the commentary team (player profiles, stats), production of running orders and making sure the stream would look good and run smoothly!

MEDIA DAYS: CRUCIAL CONTENT CAPTURING

Let’s talk media days… these time periods before a tournament are so useful for content creation and gaining publicity for the upcoming event. At the Progress Tour level, it’s almost unheard of for events to host media days, so to have the players come in one day early was just huge. So what did we do and why did we do it?

Headshots. Green screens. Action.

My first time putting up and shooting with a green screen. Carl Robertson was brought in as the official photographer. I was there with a Sony FX3 camera to get walk out videos. Together, we captured content that could then be used for social posts throughout the week, graphics such as head to heads and group standings (see graphics section below).

Interviews and fun challenges.

While media days are great to have the day before, it does mean that the same evening consists of editing… a lot of editing. These ‘VTs’ needed to be ready to go out the following morning as part of the build up show on the livestream. So, I wanted to keep the interviews simple and digestible.

Each player did a ‘walk and talk’ interview and a more traditional ‘sit down’ profile interview.

The players enjoy it too. It’s a chance for the players to grow their profile with some cool new photos and interviews. It’s also a nice way for the tournament team to build up a relationship with the players so that the rest of the week is more enjoyable and everyone is at ease. From past experiences at ATP and WTA events, this is something that is difficult to do with players when you are brought in as a freelancer so I was really pleased that everyone could use the media day to build relationships.

Media day in pictures (Credit: Carl Robertson)

THE ROLE OF CONTENT CREATORS AT SPORTS EVENTS

Alex Slabinsky of Top Tennis Training in the Courtside 'Coaches Eye' segment

The Progress Tour brought Top Tennis Training in as the official broadcast partner. Top Tennis Training has over 450,000 subscribers on YouTube. They are an established online coaching channel, founded by former professionals Alex Slabinksy and Simon Konov.

The role of content creators and influencers has become crucial at events. Patrick Mouratoglou’s ‘Ultimate Tennis Showdown’ has utilised influencers amazingly. It’s boosted their social presence and also widened the audience of the new tennis format. This was a great start by The Progress Tour to start utilising knowledgeable tennis content creators.

Alex Slabinsky was on-site for the duration of the event. Alex, alongside myself, led the live match commentary. Alex also tested out a ‘coaches eye’ segment during matches where he would be seen mic’d up courtside, talking through a particualr tactic being utilised by a player. He was class. An awesome analyst with huge amounts of experience as a former professional player.

Post match interview (Alexis Canter, Alex Slabinksy, Alex Hyman)

Novellus and Hotel Planner as sponsors

A NEW STYLE OF COMMENTARY? IT'S NOT FOR EVERYONE!

I’ve been lucky enough to have commentated on professional tennis events. I have been guided by extremely talented and established commentators who have taught me huge amounts about the rules and regs of commentating. Some takeaways…

Fans don’t come to listen to commentary and watch tennis. Fans come to watch tennis and hear your commentary on the side
Always leave at least one point free from commentary… let it breathe!
Rarely should you speak over the tennis (unless you’re in America, where they don’t mind it as much!)

With this in mind, and this being the norm, I’m always cautious of doing something different. However, we felt for this type of livestreamed tennis on YouTube, we should try a slightly alternative style of commentary. This meant…

Bringing on players to give their thoughts on the current match, but also to share stories from the tour and their lives as professional players
Being happy to talk OVER points, providing in-point analysis
Being happy to stray away from the match, if an interesting topic came up in conversation
Engaging with YouTube's live chat function where viewers can send in questions

Players head up to the commentary booth (Credit: Carl Robertson)

While this felt weird, it also felt like the way commentary should be done for this more relaxed style of tennis production. We would call it a ‘Twitch style of commentary’, where it lends itself to a younger audience who like to have more than two things going on at any time! It also meant that viewers could send in questions to commentators and players to be answered live.

STORYTELLING THROUGH GRAPHICS

Graphics are obviously an essential part of any sports live stream. From scoreboards to schedules, they're critical to informing the viewer and adding context to every match up.

In working with Jieke Stroobant from The Progress Tour, who did an incredible job creating the graphics, we were able to produce the following graphics:

Head to Head
Group Standing
Lower Thirds
Order of Play
Format/Rules
Draws
Send in your questions slate
Holding Slates for safety/back up

This is by no means the industry recommendations (!), but we were able to create the graphics on Canva with animations. These were then exported as Mp4 files (which was crucial for the walk out graphics) which were then injested into VMIX, ready for use. A special shout-out to Shikhar Mehotra, who is a genius on VMIX. He took on the role of graphics operator and as able to format the graphics the way we needed.

Technical Director Pete also added a few nice touches. For example, we added a countdown clock as an overlay onto the build up show in the hope it would spark excitement for the final to get underway and keep viewers watching. Another important graphic was the 'send in your questions' slate. This prompted viewers to engage with the commentators and send in questions about the match or indeed anything tennis related. The hope with this was to increase viewer engagement and make them feel apart of something special.

Examples of graphics used

AND... WE'RE LIVE!

Watch Day 1

Watch Day 2

Watch Day 3

Watch Finals Day

Watch the first-ever Dingles live stream!

SHOWING THE SPONSORS SOME LOVE!

Without the support of Novellus Finance and Hotel Planner, the event would not have been possible. Along with the Cardiff Met Tennis Centre's support in allowing court time, and of course the Top Tennis Training YouTube channel, the sponsors were so important to the success of the event.

We brought together a compilation of short 15 second adverts to create a 'short break' on the live stream, which was the period we could provide the sponsors some coverage and air time. This, along with court branding constantly in shot, meant that it was very clear to the viewer who was sponsoring the event.

WHAT ABOUT MAKING HISTORY WITH DINGLES?!

The first ever live streamed Dingles event in the UK! This was a lot of fun. Barry had the idea to live stream an stand-a-lone Dingles tournament, broadcasted live on YouTube for an hour long entertaining watch. Everyone bought into it! Think Tie Break Tens, but dingles.

This presented a some what of a challenge from a broadcast perspective and especially for the commentators! But energy levels were on a high and hopefully the viewers felt that. We had another court side camera capturing the supporting teams on the sidelines, which added a feeling of really being in the action for the viewer.

Whilst it wasn't perfect, it was great fun to experiment broadcasting this light-hearted, fun style of tennis. Could we see more of it in the future?

Re-live dingles through photos! (Credit: Carl Robertson)

FINAL THOUGHTS AND THANK YOU'S

Following some issues getting to air on the first day, we went live for the first match of the tournament. Credit to Pete for problem solving and crucially get us to air… this was vital for the betting company we were providing our stream for.

If you haven’t got bored yet, I will stop writing and let you see the stream for yourself!

I am extremely proud of all the work we did as a team to produce what we did. It was never going to be perfect and there are always going to be improvements that can be made. I am motivated to continue to do more events in the future and make the changes. However, the team couldn’t have invested more energy into the production so I’m proud of everyone for that!

I’m looking forward to continueing to develop my production skills and offerings to future events. If you’re keen to chat content and production, please get in touch!

A huge thank you to The Progress Tour for the trust in the production team and for giving us this opportunity. Another thank you to Cardiff Met Sport TV for allowing us to use their industry equipment.

By Alex Hyman

Alex Hyman Sport Media

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