I would have thought they’re more likely to pick up non triathlon fans who are just browsing through channels if it’s showing on a generic sports channel like Eurosport.
Non triathlon fans are not going to find it if it’s streaming on a triathlon website.
True, but casual fans aren’t going to make the effort to sign up, whereas they may have watched a free to air, and then got a bit caught up in it and moved on from being casual fans to, err, not casual fans. Committed (bit extreme maybe). A bit of marketing and putting it on YouTube/Facebbok or whatever as well as Eurosport would surely give you the best coverage, no?
Though we all know no ‘normal’ person would flick past a middle distance tri race and think, “actually i may stay and watch this for the next 4 hours, it looks well exciting”. 
Can you not watch it through their app?
This is probably it for me, we all watch Kona and it’s dull as ditchwater most of the time. Superleague is the one that could draw in potential fans, like 20:20/100 in the cricket.
There’s a fantasy picks thing too
But surely the point is, you’re potentially getting a casual fan who has a sky or virgin* subscription and stumbles across it. If I turn on sky, 99% of the time when I’m by myself I’m typing 401 (the first skysports channel) and then scrolling through. Eurosport 2 is channel 411, and appears before even any of the BT sport channels. You have a high chance of someone randomly giving it a go for 20mins, and you might hook a small proportion of them.
That’s the issue with Kona. Only people who know they want to watch Kona are going to figure out where the stream is being hosted. Noone is accidentally coming across it.
*and on Virgin, I’m fairly sure you get Eurosport for free on all but the very basic package. You get it even if you don’t subscribe to the premium sky sports channels
This. I think people that don’t have Eurosport available to them are in the minority in the UK.
Really? Maybe everyone who has a football package - sky or BT, and maybe that is the browsing audience they are hoping for, but the fuss about lack of Olympic channels on the BBC suggests most casual fans don’t know or care how to view Eurosport.
Stick it on iPlayer would get much bigger casual viewing. Cross publicity on the BBC Sport website.
But the biggest problem surely, is it going to be good viewing? Little more than following an IM tracker for most of the day?
Eurosport reach in August was 6m, compared with 54m for BBC
https://www.barb.co.uk/viewing-data/weekly-viewing-summary-new/
To be fair, I think it’s probably an exaggeration to say a minority of people in the UK don’t have access to Eurosport, but I think the vast majority of people who watch regular TV and have an interest in sport of any kind would do.
And if a triathlete has no other sporting interest and wants to watch, then from what I read during the Olympics, a one month pass to Discovery+ was only like a fiver for the month. During the PTO Daytona event, I recall most saying they’d have happily spent a few quid to watch that coverage, so paying that is probably bearable. Especially when you’d then also get Eurosport for the rest of the month to watch the Vuelta etc.
Ultimately, I imagine Eurosport will be paying the PTO for broadcast rights. And they can do that because of their subscriber model. The BBC are unlikely to be paying for stuff like that as tri is a relatively minority interest sport, so it doesnt justify licence payer money (it still surprises me they have red button coverage of most WTCS races)
That’s one thing I’m really curious about. It could be compelling TV - imagine them zeroing in on a couple of pivotal Ironwar type battles within the overall match whilst getting a regular leaderboard with splits showing the overall status of the match as it ebbs and flows. Brilliant.
On the other hand if no one has a scooby what the overall match position is, commentators are guessing and they just show us footage of Jan, Daniela etc cruising solo to easy victories for 3 hours then it could be boring as hell.
Funny thing is I have no idea which it will be!
I’m with @buzz - i’ve neevr had Eurosport in my life, and i’m a big sports fan. Always have been.
Plus that’s why i said above that having, multiple options would surely be the way to go. That way you’re not alienating/missing out on any potential viewers, which surely is very important in such a niche sport?
BBC don’t have any interest in minority sports unless they are in the Olympics.
Yes, triathlon is an Olympic sport, but the folks competing here aren’t racing for Team GB.
That’s not what Doka said. Just because only 6m actually watched Eurosport, does not mean someone watching Eastenders doesnt have the ability to watch Eurosport, despite them not having done so
Stick it on Youtube/facebook and let people get peppered with a few ads (not unusual these days) and you have a revenue model to support the subscription style of Eurosport.
But are you a big “TV sport fan”? If you don’t pay for any sport, other than maybe GCN+, then that’s not the target market. PTO need to become sustainable. That means paying punters, in just the same way the premier league, the cricket, the Lions, etc, are on subscription based TV. Even the netball* etc was on skysports, mainly because subscription based TV channels have the available funds to fill their schedule with less popular sports
*I’m picking netball as it sprang to mind as something not mainstream, but I guess it probably gets reasonable figures. Kabbadi on skysports is probably a more niche example
I’d be interested to know if that was true. That requires very high viewing figures, and largely unpredictable. Whereas Eurosport paying them a fixed cash sum for broadcast rights, is guaranteed income.
Edit - did some searching, and best I could find was “YouTube claims that successful creators earn five to six figures per year on their platform”. That’s pretty small numbers, given those top creators have millions of subscribers and push out content all year.
But why can’t they do both? I’m sure that each contract would be diminished for this reason, and i have no idea if the 2 vs 1 stream debate would work out that way. Clearly we’re not in possession of the commercial deals.
Maybe you’re right and it’s just me. Just seemed a bit short sighted to my mind. And to your earlier questions, i guess the answer these days is probably no, i’m not a TV sports person any more to be fair (thoguh i would’ve classed myself as one a decade ago).
Anyway … Collins Cup
Do you think?
It wouldn’t surprise me if Eurosport got the broadcast for free. I doubt if they could generate much advertising revenue from the broadcast, but the PTO could potentially boost their advertising and sponsorship revenue because of the TV airtime.
