According to a report by Tom Kershaw in The London\u00a0Times<\/a>, \u201cWimbledon has told players it will not be making any changes to its camera set-up at this year\u2019s championships despite a backlash over behind-the-scenes access at the Australian Open.\u201d<\/p>\nThe issue again came to the forefront of discussion in the tennis world last month when American star Coco Gauff was filmed smashing her racket in the warm-down area after a quarterfinal defeat to Elina Svitolina. After the clip went viral, Gauff said she \u201ctried to go somewhere where I thought there wasn\u2019t a camera, because I don\u2019t necessarily like breaking rackets.\u201d<\/p>\n
Iga Swiatek, the No. 2 player in the world, similarly questioned the extent to which cameras should be allowed in behind-the-scenes areas after a clip emerged that showed her interaction with security personnel who stopped her when she forgot her credentials.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe \u00adquestion is, are we tennis players or are we animals in the zoo, where they are observed even when they poop? That was exaggerating, obviously, but it would be nice to have some privacy,\u201d Swiatek said.<\/p>\n
In a letter to players, Wimbledon extolled the benefits of using these cameras for the broadcast, suggesting that backstage access has a direct positive impact on the product beamed to fans worldwide. However, the tournament also made clear that it would maintain clearly marked private areas for players and their teams. Additionally, the letter said that an in-house team would first review any behind-the-scenes footage before being sent to broadcast, rather than producers having free access to air whatever they want.<\/p>\n
Access has been a key focus in sports broadcasts beyond tennis in recent years. Golf broadcasts have begun interviewing players between shots. Baseball broadcasts interview players while they\u2019re on the field performing. Some basketball broadcasts have analysts sitting on the bench with the teams.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s certainly a level of privacy that needs to be respected, and it\u2019s clear that tennis players aren\u2019t trying to scale back access when they\u2019re on the court. Creating clearly delineated areas where cameras are and are not seems to be a sensible approach that should work for both players and fans.<\/p>\n
At the end of the day, players know that a good broadcast means growing the sport, and hopefully their pocketbooks. So long as there\u2019s a willingness to grant access at appropriate times, it\u2019s perfectly reasonable to have clearer boundaries regarding cameras placed behind the scenes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After many of the world\u2019s top tennis players have spoken out about behind-the-scenes camera access at Grand Slam…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472966,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[5113,2660,99,428,96],"class_list":["post-472965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-coco-gauff","tag-iga-swiatek","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-wimbledon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}