Germany’s leading 360° sports platform SPORT1 assesses its cross-media coverage of The World Games 2017 in Wroclaw, Poland as a success. “We achieved good ratings: the live broadcasts of the event in July were watched by 80,000 people on average overall on our free-TV channel. Concerning the market share, we are very satisfied with 1.5 per cent on average in our core target group of males aged 14-49,” said Olaf Schröder, CEO of Constantin Medien AG and Chairman of the Management of Sport1 GmbH. The sports media company had acquired the comprehensive platform-neutral media rights to The World Games 2017 – exclusively for Germany and non-exclusively for Austria and Switzerland.
SPORT1 provided cross-media coverage of The World Games 2017 on its platforms on all competition days. As well as comprehensive live coverage on free-TV, the event was shown on pay-TV on SPORT1+ and on the SPORT1 digital platforms as well. SPORT1 broadcast around 90 hours of live coverage on free-TV from The World Games 2017 in Wroclaw. Viewers were able to follow selected contests via livestream on SPORT1.de and Facebook, accompanied by features, news, interviews, background stories, picture galleries and videos.
The most significant single event was the Fistball final between Germany and Switzerland on Tuesday 25th July. Nearly up to 300,000 TV viewers watched the dramatic 4-3 win by the German team. The most watched live session was broadcast on Friday 28th July. “During this competition day we reached a market share of 3.2 per cent in our core target group. This was outstanding,” Olaf Schröder claimed.
SPORT1 representatives were also satisfied with their strategy to extend the coverage of this multisport event, recognised by the IOC, on its different social media platforms. Olaf Schröder: “Our highlight in this perspective was the semi-final and final in American Football broadcast via Facebook Live. We reached around two million users altogether.”
The TV signal was provided by ATM, the largest independent TV production company in Poland and IBS, one of the most experienced TV producers of sport events. The World Games 2017 took place 20–30 July in Wroclaw, Poland, with 31 sports and over 4,000 athletes from over 100 countries. Live feeds, news clips and delayed recaps of the competition were available for TV channels in more than 120 countries, not only in Germany but also in China, Japan, Russia and the USA. The Olympic Channel, an IOC internet television service launched in 2016, broadcast TWG 2017 as well.
