Rowing on the Small Screen

Across the country today, it’s not uncommon to see a media launch or two and a drone trailing college crews down the racecourse.

The Head of the Charles began livestreaming in 2012, and the Henley Royal Regatta made the leap in 2015. Last spring, all Intercollegiate Rowing Association and USRowing-run regattas began livestreaming on Overnght, while numerous colleges compete weekly on ESPN+ and various conference networks.

Not long ago, livestreaming was rare and largely homespun. College dual races, when covered at all, were filmed from a coach’s phone and posted live on Facebook or Instagram in all their grainy, bumpy glory.

Things have improved dramatically, but “rowing is in its infancy as far as livestream goes,” declared Lindsay Shoop, the sports commentator and Olympic gold medalist who called the rowing events at the Paris Olympic Games for NBC.

There’s still a long way to go before all rowing events of consequence are covered, and covered well. Limited budgets, inexperienced announcers, and the indifference of those in power result in broadcasts that fail to convey the excitement of the races and the effort and achievement of the rowers. And in an age when an event hasn’t happened unless it’s available on video or through digital media, this puts our sport at risk.

Getting high-quality rowing broadcasts on the air is not a vanity project or the purview of only the most prestigious events and best-funded teams. It’s everyone’s responsibility to promote high-quality coverage of rowing at every level to grow the sport by making it accessible and enticing.

The first step in providing quality rowing coverage is to commit to doing it. The Stewards of the Henley Royal Regatta had discussed broadcasting the regatta for decades, wondering, as Matthew Pinsent, four-time Olympic champion and Henley Steward, put it: “We can watch the Olympics. We can watch, on occasion, the world championships. Why not Henley?”

The cost, complexity, and technical challenges, however, were daunting. Eventually, the previous chairman of the regatta, Mike Sweeney, decided to explore what was possible and invited production companies to advise the regatta what it would take to do it well.
In 2015, Henley debuted its regatta coverage on YouTube, live and for free around the world. It’s been a resounding success, setting the standard for rowing broadcasts and featuring the first-ever live drone coverage of a sporting event.

That same “why not us?” attitude is what led Syracuse University to produce the highest-quality dual-race coverage in the States.

In 2018, the athletic department’s production team approached Dave Reischman, head coach of men’s rowing, and proposed providing live coverage of their dual race against Wisconsin. As Reischman recalled, the video team, led by senior producer Kristin Hennessey and engineer Tom White, said, “Coach, we can blow this away. We want to set the standard for how a collegiate dual race is done.”

And that’s precisely what they did. Several factors enabled the crew at Syracuse to back up their assertion. The athletic department, led by athletic director John Wildhack, bought into the importance of covering all sports and doing it well.

“We’re here to develop the whole student athlete— academically and physically—and to provide that support and structure,” said Hennessey, summarizing the department’s philosophy, and that includes all athletes—from big-time sports like football to non-revenue generators like rowing.

In addition to this philosophical buy-in, Syracuse benefits from the expertise and financial support of the ACC Network, which has an in-house unit responsible for live sports coverage. This means that top-tier equipment and the professionals who know how to use it are available to the Orange.

The broadcasts benefit also from the presence of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, the communications and journalism school at Syracuse, which is ranked consistently among the top in the U.S. and has produced such sports-broadcasting stars as Bob Costas, Marv Albert, and Mike Terico.

Students and staff from Newhouse contribute to the livestream, giving it a professional polish, complete with in-studio commentators, coach interviews, feature packages filmed weeks in advance, and on-screen graphics that explain clearly what’s happening in the race.

Six cameras covered the Wisconsin race (the production crew wanted more but were covering two other events on campus at the same time), and a satellite truck streamed the video feed back to the on-campus studio, where the broadcasters called it.

Production is completed in house, with costs covered by the ACC Network. The athletic department spends about $7,500 on salaries for camera operators and other hourly workers on site creating the broadcast.

The greatest obstacle to creating top-tier rowing coverage is money. For example, Lake Quinsigamond in Worcester, Mass., host to dozens of regattas each spring, does not have a finish-line camera because of budget constraints.

This can and does lead to major errors in regatta coverage, as was the case last spring when the men’s varsity eight final at Eastern Sprints was called definitively, and incorrectly, for Princeton on the livestream when in reality Brown was victorious by a tenth of a second.
The call was made as the camera, positioned on shore well ahead of the finish, lagged behind the racing, making it impossible to get a clear angle of the shells as they crossed the line.

Meager financial support is a complaint heard in boathouses and regatta headquarters across the country. Many athletic departments balk at committing the funds to cover smaller sports.

“Especially with the changes going on in the NCAA,” Hennessey said, “it’s challenging to divert funds, resources, and time to non-revenue-generating sports. And that’s sad.”
Even at the biggest and most well-funded events in the rowing world, the financial commitment required for livestreaming races is huge. That’s what kept the Henley Stewards from exploring broadcast options seriously for decades.

Henley’s membership model enabled the storied regatta to make the leap. Its 7,000 members, all of whom pay an annual subscription, provided the resources to shore up Henley’s infrastructure, including the racecourse, the boat tents and grandstands, and, since 2015, the livestream.

A subscription model is becoming the norm in sports as event organizers seek to offset the costs of broadcasting. Last spring, most IRA and USRowing events were livestreamed behind a paywall on Overnght.

Gary Caldwell, the outgoing IRA commissioner, believes the arrangement will improve coverage. When announcing the extension of their partnership through 2030, Caldwell said of Overnght: “Their dedication to delivering outstanding content and enhancing the viewer experience aligns perfectly with our mission to promote collegiate rowing.”

Henley decided finally to invest in livestreaming because the Stewards were concerned about having the story of the regatta—its heart, drama, and meaning—told by others. Coverage on TV and in print tended to focus on the pomp.

“There’s a dress code, there are lots of hats, there are lots of blazers. It’s a bit of a social scene, and it’s very posh,” Pinsent said. “Coverage used to be rowing in the background and lots of people watching rowing dressed up in the foreground.”

By producing its own coverage, Henley was able to put the focus squarely where they wanted it—on the racing.

“The rowing, the racing, and the athletes are the front of the picture,” said Pinsent of the current broadcast, “and the finery, the color, and the traditions are the backdrop.”
The broadcast has given Henley “an added luster, an added appeal,” Pinsent said.
“And I don’t think there’s an accidental relationship between the number of entries we have and the appeal that we have globally.” (In 2024, a record number of international crews entered the regatta.)

At Syracuse, the quality and content of the broadcasts have attracted the attention of former and future Orange, as well as their supporters.

“People want to feel good about the program, and when they see your guys race and you’re competitive, they appreciate the effort we go to to get it done,” Reischman said.

Result: improved fundraising over the past several years, including a significant donation from an alum in 2019 after the first full ACC Network coverage of a dual race.

Parents of current students have embraced the broadcasts, and families of foreign rowers unable to watch regattas in person appreciate being able to see their children race live in a professional presentation.

Recruits, too, value the exposure, making rowing for Syracuse more attractive. Races witnessed by no more than a couple dozen spectators at Onondaga Lake, including those in the shells, are now broadcast around the globe to people who are rooting for the rowing team and donating money to support it.

The name of the game is eyeballs, and for rowing, the matter is becoming urgent and existential, at both the college and Olympic level.

As a sports journalist for the BBC, Pinsent is aware of trends in the sporting world and warns that rowing “needs to stay as high up the pecking order as we possibly can. Otherwise, we stand a chance of becoming less relevant. And that’s really dangerous.
“We should be in the top 10 of Olympic sports in terms of coverage and buzz and profile and excitement. I’m not convinced we do the best possible job at that. There are loads of new sports coming in, and we need to be taking lessons from them.”

Whether it’s an on-the-water interview with athletes just across the finish line or mic’d up coaches in the boatyard and on the bicycle path, there are many ways to attract and engage more viewers.

“We need people who watch rowing only once every four years to tune in and say, ‘That was so amazing to watch. What a great product. I really felt like I was swept up in it!’” said Pinsent.

“How many people are standing around the water cooler the next day saying, ‘Did you watch that rowing race yesterday?’ That number could always be higher, and we want it to be higher, and we need to guard against that number dropping.”

Today, that means covering races professionally, not with inexperienced and volunteer commentators.

“People think it’s easy, and it’s not,” Reischman said. “It’s really tough to announce a race and try to appeal to everybody.”

Experienced commentators like Martin Cross make an event more exciting through enormous preparation and legwork. He speaks with coaches and athletes in the boatyard and on the bike path before the regatta begins. He spends hours researching lineups, collecting past results, and looking for interesting story lines on social media.

When he was invited to cover IRAs last spring, Cross created his own database by looking at lineups from earlier in the season, previous IRA results, and roster stats on each rower. He arrived at the regatta the Tuesday before racing began and walked the boatyard, introducing himself to coaches and crews and getting to know them and their stories.
“It’s a real challenge to pick out one person’s story and to have that one person on the screen and to somehow morph that into telling the story of a race,” Cross said.

Because Cross lacked updated lineups for each crew, he contacted coaches the night before racing. Similarly, Shoop emailed coaches before the Big Ten Invite, asking for information to help her get to know their teams better.

Coaches eager to improve coverage of their events would do well to emulate Syracuse’s Reischman. He and his coaches met with the production crew weeks before the Wisconsin race. They went out on the water to draft a game plan for race day and plot the best camera angles. The day before the races, coaches cut back brush and shrubs on shore to ensure ideal sight lines for the cameras. They made sure the broadcast crew had a quality launch, big enough to fit equipment that could keep up with the races.

“If people see how much you’re willing to do,” Reischman said, “they’re willing to do as much themselves.”

More than anything else, those in the rowing community need to have the vision to see what’s possible.

In his video commentary breaking down the 2023 IRA and NCAA live broadcasts, Texas coach Dave O’Neill challenged regatta organizers, especially at the NCAA, saying, “We can do a better job” than distant drone shots that fail to show individual athletes and their extraordinary exertion. These aerial views, which look like they’re shot from the Goodyear blimp, he said, don’t convey any sense of the precision and intensity as the top collegiate rowers vie to finish first with the national title on the line.

Echoing the question the Stewards asked themselves a decade ago, Reischman wondered, “Henley can do it. Why can’t we do that at the IRA?”

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