Premier competitions in skiing
The FIS World Cup events are the premier competitions in skiing, leaving to one side the unique role of the Winter Olympic Games. It is considered by many to be the most valuable title, as it requires a competitor to ski at an extremely high level in the respective disciplines throughout the season and not just in one race. The sport is seen as healthy, clean and challenging; great television action for broadcasters and a great promotional platform for sponsors.
The 2009/2010 FIS Alpine World Cup races are held between October and March, covering 25 ski resorts across 12 countries: Austria - Canada - Croatia - Finland - France - Germany – Italy - Norway - Slovenia - Sweden – Switzerland and USA. With five disciplines in total – Downhill, Super G, Giant Slalom, Slalom and Super Combined - the FIS World Cup events deliver a fantastic level of competition.
Extensive Broadcast Coverage
In the 2008/2009 FIS Alpine Ski World Cup, 40 of the most prestigious and important races were handled by Infront. These races generated over 1,100 hours of broadcast time, 800 hours of which were live. They were broadcast across 62 television stations, with a cumulative television audience of 1.3 billion. The majority of the FIS skiing events television audience is aged between 40 and 45 years old.
Long-term media rights on offer
The Infront group has extended its media rights contracts with many national skiing associations until 2015/2016, which is an impressive indicator of future stability. Infront now has media rights partnerships in place in 21 countries:
Bulgaria - Canada - China - Croatia - Czech Republic - Estonia - Finland - France - Germany - Italy - Japan - Korea - Norway - Poland - Russia - Slovakia - Slovenia - Spain - Sweden - Switzerland - USA
The media rights on offer are international, including the majority of Men’s and Women’s FIS Alpine and Nordic World Cup competitions, together with all FIS Snowboard and Freestyle World Cup events. Domestic rights are also available for Canada, France, Italy, Slovenia and Sweden. All events are offered live and/or delayed, with high quality production overseen by Infront.
A top quality television product
Taking a long term perspective, Infront is developing the FIS properties as a coherent, top quality television entertainment product. As a result a top quality world feed is produced on the base of the FIS TV Standard - which has been developed to suit each discipline individually and applies to all events. This is in line with the FIS objective of raising audience interest in the races and the continuity of the competition - in particular among a younger audience.
Infront is applying all of its specialist resources to the FIS events with impressive results, these include; management, consulting and operational teams based in Austria, Finland, Italy and Switzerland as well as its host broadcast experience through Infront Production and Infront Advanced Media Solutions, Infront’s dedicated New Media Competence Centre.
Weekly Magazine Programmes
Infront also produces and distributes weekly TV magazine programmes running throughout the winter season including the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup Report, the Snowboard FIS Word Cup Magazine and the Freestyle FIS World Cup Magazine.
Each magazine series is made of a number of shows (16 for Alpine Skiing, 17 for Snowboarding and 14 for Freestyle) with each 25 minute show featuring race action, interviews, profiles of top competitors, venue presentations, backstage shots and items of interest from the world’s top winter sports resorts. The programmes are available via satellite or tape and include English voiceover on a separate track - full English scripts are also supplied.
17 years of skiing history
Infront also offers access to an extraordinary range of archive footage, taking advantage of its 17 year relationship with the FIS Skiing events. It can produce tailored programmes for broadcasters on request.
