The International Association of Athletics Federations has announced a significant increase in global television coverage for its 2014 World Indoor Championships, which took place from March 7-9 in Sopot, Poland.
The Championships marked the first competition under the new four year broadcasting agreement between the IAAF and European Broadcasting Union, the consortium of public-service broadcasters, which covers the 2014-17 World Athletics Series.
The EBU is the IAAF’s broadcast partner for Europe and Africa with the Dentsu agency covering the rest of the world. The IAAF said initial reports confirm a television audience in the tens of millions for Sopot 2014 across Europe and Africa, representing an improvement on the 2012 World Indoor Championships in Istanbul and an increase of more than 300 per cent compared to the same event four years ago in Doha.
Broadcasters in 24 European countries and pan-European coverage offered over 250 hours of transmission for the 2014 Championships. The IAAF added that “extensive” coverage was also achieved in Africa with free-to-air broadcasts in 19 territories as well as “widespread” pay-television coverage across sub-Saharan Africa.
IAAF president Lamine Diack said: “Significantly Sopot 2014 marked the commencement of our new broadcasting agreement with EBU. The preliminary figures for the audience, countries and number of hours transmitted represented a particularly encouraging beginning to that partnership. The IAAF is especially pleased that fans across Europe were able to watch the championships thanks to mostly free-to-air national agreements and Eurosport’s pan-European coverage.”