Fiend at Court Unplugged
The Tokyo Olympic Tennis competition got underway yesterday evening and ran overnight. With the timezone differential, Olympic tennis will be played from 10pm through 6am Eastern Time during the early rounds. That is basically overnight, for the continental United States. Additionally, tennis matches will not be broadcast on the Tennis Channel as was the practice with previous Olympic competitions. The primary station in the United States will be the Olympics Channel.
The official tennis draws for the Olympics are posted on the ITF website, which is a non-standard location for fans of professional tennis. The mixed draw isn’t out yet and is expected to be published Tuesday July 27.
From the NBC website, it appears that all tennis matches will be streamed and that replays of matches will be available for free for cable subscribers in the United States. That is good news to tennis fans who feared that the sport might be put behind the Peacock paywall again. At the French Open, Roger Federer’s match was only available on the new NBC premium streaming service. Mercifully, Peacock will carry very limited Olympic content.
There are two basic ways to stream the matches from NBC. For people with browser access to the internet the matches can be watched directly on the nbcolympics.com website. The matches will also be available on the NBC Sports App.
The complete tennis schedule is available at nbcolympics.com/schedule/sport/tennis. Replays can be found at www.nbcolympics.com/replays/sport/tennis.
| Date | Events |
|---|---|
| 7/23-7/29 | M/W Singles, Doubles and Mixed Doubles – early rounds (mostly starting 9 p.m. ET) |
| 7/29 | Men’s Doubles Bronze Medal Match (11 p.m. ET) |
| Men’s Singles Semifinal 1 (11 p.m. ET) | |
| 7/30 | Men’s Singles Semifinal 2 (1:30 a.m. ET) |
| Mixed Doubles Semifinal 1 (1:30 a.m. ET) | |
| Men’s Doubles Gold Medal Match (4:30 a.m. ET) | |
| Mixed Doubles Semifinal 2 (4:30 a.m. ET) | |
| Men’s Singles Bronze Medal Match (11 p.m. ET) | |
| Women’s Doubles Bronze Medal Match (11 p.m. ET) | |
| 7/31 | Women’s Singles Bronze Medal Match (2 a.m. ET) |
| Mixed Doubles Bronze Medal Match (3 a.m. ET) | |
| Women’s Singles Gold Medal Match (5 a.m. ET) | |
| Men’s Singles Gold Medal Match (11 p.m. ET) | |
| 8/1 | Women’s Doubles Gold Medal Match (2 a.m. ET) |
| Mixed Doubles Gold Medal Match (5 a.m. ET) |
