LONDON, BERGEN, Norway, NEW YORK and BURLINGTON, Canada—ATP Media, the global media and distribution arm of professional tennis' ATP Tour, has entered into a multi-year strategic partnership with Play Anywhere for interactive tennis graphics.
“We are honored to partner with ATP Media to bring enhanced consumer experiences to viewers while ensuring that all parties in the value chain are remunerated, helping to expand the Play Anywhere ecosystem as a global standard," said Yaacov Ben-Yaacov, CEO of Play Anywhere.
The agreement establishes Play Anywhere as the exclusive provider of contextual and monetizable interactive experiences across all of ATP Media’s broadcast and streaming distribution worldwide.
Based on Play Anywhere’s interactive rights framework, the partnership enables ATP Media to provide engaging interactive experiences powered by official data from Tennis Data Innovations (TDI) to fans worldwide while ensuring that production quality is preserved through the Play Anywhere compliance platform. The system includes the front-end television-quality interactive graphics engine of Evertz-owned Ease Live, Evertz said.
Play Anywhere will be offered to ATP Media’s worldwide broadcast partners and launched via its direct-to-consumer streaming service Tennis TV, across both linear and digital distribution.
“Our collaboration with ATP Media and Play Anywhere will revolutionize the tennis fan experience globally,” said Kjetil Horneland, CEO of Ease Live. “Our interactive graphics platform integrates seamlessly with existing broadcast and sports data workflows, giving ATP Media the scalability to engage audiences worldwide. By delivering interactive overlays across the screens, we help ATP Media foster deeper connections with fans and open new avenues for monetization automated by Play Anywhere."
The partnership follows Play Anywhere’s launches with LALIGA and at the Paris 2024 Olympics. Play Anywhere’s LALIGA launch has engaged sports fans around the world, and its Olympics interactivity was enjoyed by viewers in over a dozen countries across more than 30 sports. This partnership with ATP Media further cements Play Anywhere’s position as the leader in interactivity compliance and monetization, Evertz said.
“We are very excited to partner with Play Anywhere and Ease Live. We are impressed with their best-of-breed interactivity, their field-tested and cutting-edge clearinghouse platform, and their creative approach to identifying new revenue streams for content owners, rightsholders and other participating stakeholders in the sports broadcast and streaming ecosystem, while always ensuring that we can control the production quality through their unique compliance platform,” said ATP Media CEO Mark Webster.
More information is available on the company’s website.
