With these challenges in mind, the World
Rowing marketing team has exerted considerable
effort to ensure that not only will the host
international TV production be of the very highest
quality for a global audience, but we also had to
find ways to maintain – and even increase – the
relevance of rowing programming at this time in
the Northern Hemisphere.
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Our first step was to ensure that we would have
a world-class host production from New Zealand
which would be available to everyone in that
country for every racing day, as well as deliver
all finals to our TV partners worldwide. With SKY
New Zealand, we have been able to fulfil all our
objectives and we are confident that they will
produce a great promotion for rowing. In addition,
we have extended our relationship for the next
two years, to transmit our World Rowing regattas
(World Cups and World Championships) to their
NZ audience in 2011 and 2012.
Our second step was to react to the considerable
changes of viewing habits that are now affecting
broadcasters around the world. As much as the
hard-core rowing audience enjoys long, live race
coverage, we will never attract new channels
and younger audiences with this “traditional”
programming. Each TV market wants to see how
their own rowers have performed; they want
to get to know them as people and to receive
“mother-tongue” interviews, interesting features
and background material. So we now have our own
production team (Quattro Media based in Munich)
which attends all televised World Rowing regattas
to film and produce complementary material in
support of the live race host TV production. In
one stroke, we have increased the number of TV
channels that show rowing and we are building
better recognition and appreciation of our athletes,
and what it really takes to compete at such a high,
international level.
Our next job was to secure as wide a coverage of
Karapiro 2010 as possible. Within Europe, World
Rowing is fortunate to have a relationship with the
European Broadcasting Union. This is the largest
association of national public broadcasters in the
world and, via its member channels, such as the UK’s
BBC, Germany’s ARD & ZDF and the pan-European
sports channel Eurosport, we can transmit rowing to
the largest possible audiences across that continent.
At the time of going to press – which is before
the preliminary TV deadline - we have received
commitments to show the World Championships
in Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Hungary,
Slovenia, Russia, Norway, Poland and via Eurosport.
Outside of Europe, Canada’s CBC, the USA’s Universal
Sports Network and Australia’s FOX TV have all
committed to taking the live international TV signal
for their home markets. So even if the weather
outside might not be that good in the Northern
Hemisphere, there will be large audiences following
our racing on both live and deferred bases.
Our final step was to ensure that we could
deliver live race-streaming over the Internet. In
most countries outside Europe, the selected TV
channels mentioned above will stream the live
racing over their own websites. Then, after a delay
of 24 hours, streaming from our own website
www.worldrowing.com will kick in. Within Europe,
www.worldrowing.com will be live-streaming from
the first to the last race as well as all the interviews
that we will be filming in Karapiro.
So, wherever you live and whatever the conditions
are outdoors, you can be assured that you will
see a fantastic TV show from Karapiro, promoting
rowing and our supreme athletes, to the world.
■ Andy Couper
FISA Marketing Director
