The PTO 2020 Championship at Challenge Daytona served up a finale to a challenging year for professional triathletes – as over 100 of the world’s best triathletes battled it out over a 100km course at Challenge Daytona on December 6th, 2020.
The world-famous Daytona International Speedway served up the 2km swim taking place in Lake Lloyd at the centre of the speedway, an 80km bike and an 18km run. With a US$1.15 million prize purse on offer, racing was broadcast live to a global audience.
NASCAR Productions applied their Emmy Award-winning skills to the TV broadcast using re-imagined graphics, wireless cameras, helmet cams and drone footage. Canada’s Paula Findlay won the battle in the women’s race and Gustav Iden from Norway triumphed in the men’s race – with both pro athletes bagging an equal pay check of US$100,000.
The race action was broadcast live to a global audience in over 150 countries around the world, following broadcast deals secured by IMG.
Live coverage of the event was shown on Peacock, NBC Universal’s streaming service, in addition to a PTO web-based live stream. Among the countries that broadcast the 48-minute highlights show in December and through to January were:
- USA (NBC and NBCSN),
- Australia (Fox Sports Australia),
- The Balkans (Sportklub),
- Canada (TSN),
- China (Tencent),
- France (L’Equipe),
- India (Eurosport),
- Italy (Sportitalia),
- Latin America and the Caribbean (DirecTV),
- Pan Asia, including Brunei, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Myanmar, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam (Fox Sports Asia),
- South Africa (Supersport),
- Spain (RTVE),
- Turkey (Ssport), and
- UK (BT Sport).
The NBC/NBCSN coverage alone produced 600K average viewers. There were reportedly 1.1M unique views with a household reach of 88.91% of all households in the United States.
Challenge Family and PTO added that… ‘Total digital consumption of 260,000 hours proved that there is an appetite for an entertaining TV broadcast of the sport.’
The PTO livestream saw a total of about 100,000 registered users with an average watch time of 32 minutes, indicating an engaged fan base. International broadcast viewership figures will be available at a later date.
More than 30 print, digital and broadcast outlets from around the world including The New York Times, Washington Post, ESPN and CBC and L’Equipe covered the event. The race delivered over 24K mentions across various earned media channels – a claimed reach of over 450 million – equating to a reported media value of US$4.2 million.
The race weekend generated over 5K social mentions with 1.4K unique participants yielding nearly 25M social impressions and Daytona International Speedway elevated the social conversation across its official Facebook and Twitter channels, yielding an additional 35K impressions and engagements.
William Christy, CEO of Challenge North America said “The PTO 2020 Championship at Challenge Daytona and partners, NASCAR Productions and Daytona International Speedway presented the strongest field of triathletes ever assembled.
“Our team delivered this race and successfully brought the sport to life in a new way to entice viewers and celebrate the champion triathletes. We believe we delivered on the highest level of entertainment expectations set by the top broadcasters around the world and the viewing figures support this.
“You’ve never seen anything quite like the tremendous mental and physical stamina it takes to compete on this course and the judging by the viewing figures the world is clearly is in agreement.”
