Viewing figures for internet video nearly quadruple
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The elite men's World Cup start in Windham, New York(Image credit: Dave McElwaine/trailwatch.net)
Nino Schurter (Scott-Swisspower) wins the Val d'Isere World Cup and the overall title(Image credit: Scott-Swisspower MTB-Racing)
Catharine Pendrel (Luna Pro Team) nailing down her tenth World Cup victory(Image credit: Epic Rides)
Viewership of the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup video coverage soared in 2012, the first year when the UCI and Redbull Media House (RBMH) partnered on coverage. In previous years, the UCI had teamed up with Freecaster.tv on World Cup video mountain bike coverage.
In total, 1.46 million internet users watched videos of the World Cup action in 2012 on the internet, whether live broadcasts or replays. The final figure is likely even higher, since the videos from the Windham, United States and Val d'Isère, France rounds were not included in the count, for technical reasons.
The Mont-Sainte-Anne, Canada round, which was raced in June, recorded the strongest growth. The cross country event went from 25,927 views last year to 102,309 this year. The growth rate is the same for downhill, from 38,388 to 110,055 views.
Overall, two-thirds was watched live rather than replayed.
Downhill events were most successful, with 860,745 videos viewed during the 2012 World Cup. The most followed event was the downhill race at Fort William, Great Britain in June, which received 166,219 views.
The UCI had a mission to give new impulse to the video coverage of the World Cup. Its partner RBMH provided production, webcasting and content syndication.
"The significant increase in media coverage of the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup shows that this discipline holds great media potential," said Nicole Gruber, Commercial Manager at UCI. "Our partnership with Red Bull Media House has been very successful and we worked hard together to develop responses to the interest which mountain bike creates. We used more and better filming, production and promotion techniques on site."
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"We want to go further," said Gruber, "specifically behind the scenes at events. We want to develop media coverage of mountain bike even more in the coming years."
The uptick came in an Olympic year although the numbers mentioned above do not include Olympic viewership as rights and production were done by other parties.
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