POSTED: March 23rd 2010
SpeakingUp
NEIL WILSON: IAAF's TV strategy on right track but still falls short of winning line
THE NEIL WILSON COLUMN / An authoritative, exclusive new series only from Sports Features Communications
LONDON: The future of athletics as a televised sport would have seemed in doubt to those in Doha for the IAAF world indoor championships. No Eurosport, no BBC and, most baffling of all, no German network only seven months after record-breaking audiences there for the previous IAAF world championship.
Yet officials from the meetings which form the IAAF’s new Diamond League, gathered in the same Qatari city, heard a report from the sales team at IMG that was beyond their dreams. Television cannot get enough of the twenty20 version of the sport.
Worldwide take-up of the rights means that IMG probably surpassed its guarantee to the IAAF two months out from the first meeting and, with its sales campaign still far from complete, will make a handsome profit. Not bad when year one clashes with soccer’s World Cup, four of the meetings directly.
Take Britain, where the world indoor championships could be seen only streamed on a newspaper’s website or in much-reduced form on ESPN, a still small subscription channel.
Live rights buy-up
The Diamond League meeting in Gateshead has been sold four months in advance to 48 countries for live transmission, with five more taking delayed packages from the BBC’s UK transmission. Last year the same meeting was seen in less than a third as many countries.
The host broadcasters in 12 countries where Diamond League meetings take place, many major networks such as NBC in the United States, have bought live rights to the entire 14-meeting series. So have networks in Germany and several other countries where no meetings are scheduled.
Only in Britain, of the host nations, is a sale still in negotiation. BBC has a problem because of the World Cup and Wimbledon clash, and Sky has entered the fray with a rival bid.
So, far from being choked at birth by its clash with World Cup year, athletics’ fledgling promises to emerge as a lusty baby giving full voice to its presence when it rises from its blocks in Doha on May 14.
So why is the IAAF having difficulty selling its other events?
A growing aversion to athletics’ championship format among viewers may be one reason. The entire first day in Doha was taken up with preliminaries, a paint-drying experience for all but the aficionados.
Attention span clue
A Diamond League meeting, in contrast, is finals-only and lasts no longer than a twenty20 match. Another reason is the refusal of the IAAF and its European continental association, the EAA, to do business together. Selling world and European indoor and outdoor championships in a single television package, alternating as they do in odd and even years, might excite more interest and add value.
The IAAF declined the European Broadcasting Union’s offer to renew its contract at half its former price. Instead it chose media group IEC in Sport’s offer of 25 per cent more than the EBU offer but with fewer guarantees of wide coverage.
A combined European and world package may have produced more in both respects. The sport’s politicians should recognise that they are elected in the sport’s interests, not factional aggrandisement.
NEIL WILSON reported his first Olympic Games in Munich in 1972. He has since covered another nine summer and nine winter Olympics for various newspapers, including The Independent and the Daily Mail with whom he has worked for the last 19 years as Athletics and Olympic correspondent. He was Britain's Sports Journalist of the Year in 1984 and is the author of seven books.
Keywords · Neil Wilson · IAAF · Doha · World Indoor Championships · IMG · Diamond League
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