The Ryder Cup 2014 - a memorable experience for all involved
The Ryder Cup is the biggest event in golf and I’ve been fortunate enough to be a part of Sky’s production team for nine out of the ten and executive producer for the last four. We’ve won Royal Television Society awards for our commentary in 1997 and the Broadcast Award in the best live sports broadcast category for The 2012 Ryder Cup, but I can proudly say that The 2014 Ryder Cup was the best we’ve done yet.
To celebrate our tenth Ryder Cup on Sky we dedicated a whole channel to it, showing more than 330 hours of related programming in two weeks. The channel had a nice mix of archive programming together with some fresh content including in depth interviews with European captain Paul McGinley and Europe’s hero at Medinah, Ian Poulter. World No1 Rory McIlroy came in to Sky Studios on Sunday and joined Ben and Kammy on the Goals On Sunday sofa to talk Ryder Cup and Manchester United, and in the evening a live studio audience picked the brains of Butch Harmon and three former winning European captains in our live preview show. That certainly set the scene for an incredible week of Ryder Cup action ahead.
I have to pay tribute to our production team who worked long unsociable hours to produce the spellbinding pictures we all enjoyed. From the runners to the Talent, we all mucked in together with 3 am alarm calls – producing preview shows, build ups from the studio; twelve hours of continuous live coverage each day and highlights late into the evening. These were long days but it was all worth it to see Jamie Donaldson cap a triumphant European performance at the 15th and the ensuing celebrations. The role of European Tour Productions, was crucial in providing the ball-by-ball golf coverage as was the support of Sky Sports News HQ who constantly updated the stories and cross promoted the Ryder Cup Channel. We also tested 4K for the first time on a Golf production, which proved useful and successful.
In the studio special guests Jack Nicklaus and Darren Clarke completed a presentation team with a wealth of experience of more than 100 Ryder Cups as players and analysts. They joined Colin Montgomerie and Butch Harmon in a high-powered four ball, never short of opinion. David Livingstone expertly presented the live coverage, with a brilliant blend of hard edged journalism and humour. Throughout the build-up Paul McGinley, himself a Sky ambassador has been in a constant reference point for our plans, interested in everything we were doing both to promote the event as well as show it.
At Gleneagles we built the biggest and one of the best studios we’ve ever seen on Sky Sports, overlooking the first tee so we could bring the packed stand of fans behind the presenters into view and make them part of our build-up to the matches. We decorated the tunnel that connects the practice grounds and the first tee with images of Ryder Cup legends finishing with Seve. It was very moving every time a player tipped his image on the way out to the first tee. And we worked with The Ryder Cup to bring the winning ceremony and trophy lift as soon as possible after the winning putt.
From the very start the European Tour was behind our campaign to open up The 2014 Ryder Cup to as many people as possible through programming across Sky Sports and Sky Sports News HQ, and our award winning digital media services. Our marketing campaign around the theme of ‘Bring The Noise’ aimed to encourage fans to get loudly and passionately behind the European team, and it was a huge success. Our dedicated Sky Sports Ryder Cup channel was viewed by over 4.5m people, and digital consumption was up 63% on Medinah with over 5m viewers enjoying our website and apps. There were also a record audience figures for Sky customers watching on Sky Go and Now TV.
Overall The 2014 Ryder Cup was an example of how TV and a sporting organization come together to create a spectacular showpiece event and a memorable experience for those attending and watching at home. - See more at: http://corporate.sky.com/skyviews/sky/the-ryder-cup-2014---a-memorable-experience-for-all-involved#sthash.bjn4kNu3.dpuf
