Free, Live Tennis with World’s Top Tournaments and Players
Now Available on The Roku Channel all Year Round
LOS ANGELES and SAN JOSE, Calif., Dec. 5, 2023 – Tennis Channel and Roku have partnered to carry T2 – the 24-hour sports network’s second channel – to The Roku Channel in the United States, effective immediately. T2 will unlock free, year-round access to live, daily coverage of the sport’s best players and signature events for the estimated U.S. households with 100-million people* reached by The Roku Channel (Q4 2022). The Roku Channel is the No. 1 free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) service by reach on the Roku platform (Q3 2023).
In addition to accessing T2 through The Roku Channel, viewers can also easily access T2 through the Sports Experience on Roku’s Home Screen. Roku’s Sports Experience makes discovering and accessing live, upcoming, and on-demand sports content easier than ever, driving engagement and awareness for Roku’s content partners and creating a personalized viewing experience for audiences.
With original programming and events that do not appear on Tennis Channel, T2 debuted in 2022 and since has provided fans with more annual free, live tennis than ever in U.S. television history. From January through November, professional tennis features multiple tournaments every week most of the time, sometimes as many as six at once. These consist of men’s and women’s competition; singles, doubles and mixed matches; all day long from various time zones around the world. Tennis Channel has the U.S. media rights to almost all of it, meaning T2 can stand alone among FAST sports channels in its ability to bring live, top-tier coverage of one of the country’s historically popular sports – every day.
The Roku Channel is available on Roku devices or TVs, online at TheRokuChannel.Roku.com, Amazon Fire TVs, Samsung TVs, Google TV, and other Android TV OS devices. Viewers can find T2 through The Roku Channel’s Live TV Guide. The channel is among the top five on Roku by active account reach and streaming hour engagement (Q1 2023) and features more than 80,000 free movies and programs, and more than 350 free live linear television channels in the United States. The Roku Channel licenses and distributes content from more than 250 partners.
“This partnership with Roku represents a watershed moment in the growth and development of T2,” said Lee Schlazer, senior vice president, distribution, Sinclair and Tennis Channel. “Having the world’s best tennis available for free every day on The Roku Channel will not only thrill current aficionados who haven’t had this before, but also undoubtedly lead to millions of new fans who discover this amazing sport and see what the excitement’s all about. We couldn’t be more pleased to work with Roku on this.”
“We’re thrilled to give millions of streamers 24/7 access to T2’s robust lineup of live tennis events and original programming,” said Joe Franzetta, head of sports, Roku Media. “The launch of T2 will give our audiences a courtside seat at the top tournaments with the best players in the game for free. We look forward to harnessing the reach and scale of The Roku Channel, as well as the integrated viewing experiences only found on the Roku platform, to help more audiences discover the thrill of T2’s standout sports programming.”
T2’s annual live and encore calendar offers most of the tournaments that Tennis Channel carries throughout the year, albeit with different matches and players from each. This allows viewers with access to both channels to choose between simultaneous competitions from the sport’s top events, like Roland Garros (commonly known as the French Open and one of the sport’s four annual majors), the BNP Paribas Open, Miami Open, Monte-Carlo Masters, Italian Open, Canadian Open, Davis Cup and the Billie Jean King Cup.
In addition to Roku, T2 is available on four services: Amazon Freevee, Fubo, Samsung TV Plus and YouTube TV.
*By hours streamed (Hypothesis Group: December 2022)
Wish T2 Commentators’ would dispense on their noise during game play. They louder than game play action. Iove the second of game play action.
Please, let me enjoy online game action.
Please, remove the Tennis Channel Second Serve broadcast. Who wants to watch a tennis match on 33% of the screen, and listen to the incessant talking of three or four people? When the broadcast starts, I turned it off. I can’t stand it!
Please, stop broadcasting the Tennis Second Server. Who wants to hear 3 or 4 people talking incessantly, while watching a tennis match on 1/3 of the screen? Really ridiculous!