Key Takeaways
- Short-form storytelling is no longer an add-on to linear broadcasts; it plays a central role in driving anticipation, discovery, and sustained engagement across digital and social platforms.
- Rights holders that equip broadcast partners with a steady stream of digital-first, short-form assets can extend the reach of live coverage and better align with modern viewing habits.
- AI-powered content creation platforms enable sports organizations to scale high-quality, multi-format content production, ensuring broadcasters receive the assets needed to stay relevant across channels.
Warner Bros. Discovery will deliver more than 300 hours of coverage from Roland-Garros via multiple platforms in the US. In Europe, 215 hours of live coverage will be available on TNT Sports and Eurosport. Chinese internet giant Tencent will air every match from Paris, plus editorial programming, throughout the event.
Each year, it seems, Roland-Garros has more mouths to feed – something the French Tennis Federation (Fédération française de tennis, or FFT) is acutely aware of.
“We had to question everything we were doing and ask ourselves how to better serve our broadcasters,” said Amandine Tyl, head of production and broadcast services at FFT, adding that the main challenge is to provide media partners “with the content they need in relation to their audience and changing consumption habits. Tennis is a sport with an audience that tends to be aging, so one of our goals is to rejuvenate this viewership.”
Rejuvenating the French Open’s viewership, the FFT concluded, requires more digital and less broadcast-centric content. That means a focus on behind-the-scenes content and digital assets from around the Roland-Garros grounds – in 2025, Tyl noted, 4,000 or 5,000 assets were collected – which broadcasters distribute across their digital channels and platforms.
Digital Payoff
Offering broadcast partners content that suits their consumption patterns proved worthwhile. In 2025, Warner Bros. Discovery’s digital platforms, including Eurosport and TNT Sports social channels across Europe, recorded 883 million video views during Roland-Garros. In the US, content shared on WBD’s Bleacher Report and House of Highlights generated more than 800 million video views.
Bleacher Report, TNT Sports’ digital extension, expanded the storytelling by serving fans original, exclusive content. The strategy worked so well that this year, TNT’s production team will integrate more B/R-created content into its television coverage. “We saw how potent that can be during the tournament when done correctly,” said Craig Barry, executive vice president & chief content officer at TNT Sports. “We’ll continue to double down on that.”
According to Barry, B/R will execute multiple digital projects at Roland-Garros 2026, including short-form comedic segments with players led by Lucas Brody from House of Highlights. Brody will also join “The Mac Zone,” a daily, two-hour-long show hosted by John and Patrick McEnroe during the first six days of the tournament, to interact with talent, players, and YouTube viewers.
Part of Brody’s job on “The Mac Zone,” said Tyler Price, Bleacher Report’s head of content, will be generating “clippable moments that can live beyond that show”. These short-form videos will then be distributed on WBD’s other platforms to build anticipation for the tournament’s more traditional coverage.
Short-Form Momentum
The French Open displayed its own ability to captivate international audiences. Recognizing that it functions as a broadcaster in its own right across social media, the FFT commissioned sports marketing agency Samba Digital to manage the tournament’s official TikTok account.
In 2025, the coverage on the short-form video platform highlighted key moments such as standout rallies, exclusive interviews, and funny sequences, enriched by footage from training sessions, player celebrations, and celebrity appearances. The dynamic content strategy produced some strong numbers:
- 808,000 new followers
- 770 million views
- 44.1 million likes
The New Content Stack
The lesson from Roland-Garros is not that traditional broadcasts matter less, but that they now exist within a much broader content ecosystem. Fans increasingly discover tournaments through short-form storytelling before ever tuning into linear coverage. Supplying broadcast partners with these digital-first assets has become essential to expanding reach, engaging younger audiences, and building momentum around live coverage itself.
Meeting that demand at scale requires the right infrastructure. AI-powered content creation platforms enable rights holders to rapidly generate and distribute a continuous stream of highlights, interviews, reactions, and behind-the-scenes moments in multiple formats across every platform. The result is a more dynamic content operation that helps media partners keep audiences engaged long before first serve, and long after match point.
Actionable Insights:
- Package live moments in short, platform-native clips that broadcasters can deploy on social and digital immediately.
- Build a repeatable workflow for behind-the-scenes, reactions, and highlights so one match becomes multiple assets.
- Use AI tools to scale clipping, formatting, and distribution without adding manual production load.
