Amazon broadcasts
US Open tennis

Amazon is broadcasting exclusively the US Open tennis this year. Nothing so remarkable about this since the big media giant has been offering films and TV shows for a while now. It's just been a matter of time before they get involved in live sport.

At the venue itself there'll be no real changes. The camera teams will be the same, so there is nothing to fear. There is a suggestion that the image quality will be very inferior since it is coming over the web, and computer links, rather than satellites. Otherwise, our tennis coverage won't change just because Amazon will be doing it.

Player turned commentator

One of the things that won't change much is the commentators. I've made comments elsewhere about commentators that are not very complimentary, so I'm not reassured to hear that two familiar names will be there. Annabel Croft and Greg Rusedski are two of the most inane observers of the game, and you wonder how they ever managed to get to the higher levels. There must have been something there. Can it be that Greg Rusedski only got that far because he was left-handed, and could exploit it well for his serve/volley game? With Annabel Croft  I can only say I never really saw her play. I seem to remember she had one good tournament win in the USA, but otherwise she always seemed to lose early on in the tournaments I watched. I think she was probably a fighter, and quite obedient to her coaches, but I'm not sure she knows about how a thinking tennis player ticks.

Slovakian player Daniela Hantuchova is one I do remember, if only for her ever-present mother in the stands. I'm prepared to give her a chance, since she had a successful long career, without having the stamina to get through a big draw.

Jim Courier and Mark Petchey are two commentators who do a pretty good job. Both have very original tennis minds, and are both quite dead-pan and realistic about the sport. They frequently argue when they are working together, but this in itself is quite funny, without either of them being funny on their own. There's a certain harmony.

Unfortunately, if you put one smart commentator in with one non-thinker, it is most often brought down to the level of the non-thinker.

It doesn't help that most UK commentators are Murray-obsessed, and are incapable of portraying, and enthusing for,  the wider game - club tennis, academies, tennis business, smaller tournaments, players and playing conditions from other countries.

Artificial Intelligence

One thing that is new will be Alexa, the first application of an Artificial Intelligence tool for tennis. We don't need to be fed endless statistics, since the statistics world as it is doesn't help much in tennis. % of first serves in does give you half an idea how a match is going, but it is often such a small part of the big picture that you can safely ignore it. If statistics are applied in connection with other information, such as the surface, conditions, opponents, and life history of a certain player, then the statistics could start to have some meaning. If the Alexa application works on algorithms that Amazon will surely use, I can imagine it going down this route.

AI has a scary future, but has been around us for a while, being tested and perfected while we haven't been noticing. Soon, all info and stats on a person will be collated in such a way that you'll be able to delve into his mind and his decision-making.

I've heard that Alexa will be set at a low level first, so it seems that it is still in the test phase.

Amazon UK & Ireland

So the US Open 2018 will only be available on Amazon in UK & Ireland. I've been watching tennis on the web for a while now, so it'll be interesting to see how the various You tube pirateers are able to override their systems. Maybe it's just a question of the live game. If you want to watch live, then it could be that Amazon is the only way.

Red button joy

My wife has an Amazon Prime account, and I have seen in advertising that these account holders will have access to not only the live matches, but also to a multiple court facility, rather like the BBC red button for Wimbledon. The BBC red button is free.   

The whole UK attitude to tennis is distorted by the fact that BBC manages to have exclusive rights to Wimbledon, including Qualifying, and through the red button are able to show countless matches including doubles and juniors. This is a tennis fan's paradise. But it's only for two weeks a year. Will the same thing happen for Amazon and the US Open?

For the US Open itself you have a few different options. You can get Amazon Prime for £79 per year or Prime Video for £5.99 per month. Getting the full year includes various benefits likes free delivery, deals and more. What about a 30-day free trial, giving you more than enough time to watch the US Open, then quit, because there's no good reason to continue.

Tennis streaming already is not new. If you go onto the atp website you can log onto any match live for a fee, including many interesting matches in Challengers.

I personally find the atp fee reasonable, although I don't pay it. I prefer to watch highlights programmes on the web for free. I don't have the time to sit through entire tennis matches, unless I'm sitting next to someone I can chat to between points.

The typical UK tennis fan may be dismayed that Amazon has taken over the US Open, and he has to pay. But maybe this is a warning sign to Sky, whose real problem is that if you subscribe to their sports, you're paying for 10% of sport you really want to watch. 

The next step is that every sports fan can individualise their own packages.