June 27, 2014 – A season 2013/14 final report by Repucom summarizing the TV coverage of the Cross-Country, Ski Jumping, Nordic Combined, Alpine Skiing, Freestyle Skiing and Snowboard FIS World Cups showed that the overall total broadcasting time amounted to almost 7,500 hours. The total cumulative TV audience is estimated at 6,239 million.

Great TV coverage for FIS events continues © GEPA pictures

Highest broadcasting time in Alpine Skiing, highest audience in Ski Jumping

In terms of both broadcasting time and audience, Alpine Skiing accounted for 48% of the total broadcasting time (3,551 hours) and for a total audience of 2.721 million. The respective figures for Ski Jumping are 21% of broadcasting time and a total audience of 2.963 million and for Cross-Country Skiing, 14% of broadcasting time and 1.245 million audience.

Nordic Combined, Freestyle Skiing and Snowboarding make up the remaining 17% of broadcasting time and 457 million viewers.

FIS Marketing Manager Marcel Looze commented on the trends over the past season: As we measure levels from different regions and countries it is not correct to compare the results of the various disciplines with each other. We do use our research to monitor the development of each individual discipline to see how we compare to other sports.

It is good to see that all winter sports are dominating TV broadcasts between October and March and even better to see that FIS events contribute a significant share of that programming. On Eurosport, a sports-dedicated channel, this measured 60% over the season.

We also see that in order to keep growing in terms of media impact we need to work hard at keeping our sport attractive during the whole competition as TV viewers tend to select their viewing times and often only watch the final moments of competitions.