To grow the sport, we need better coverage than this (NYC marathon broadcast)

Give permission to post videos on Youtube, facebook. That'll help Hollywood and Silicon Valley trillionaires!

Collegiate cross country races and longer track events have the same basic problem. There are important stories with unfolding race drama behind the leader(s) and all too often there isn’t a camera on them so you miss important storylines.

As others have said, distance running needs an innovative broadcast format that includes multiple camera feeds at the same time. The sport really needs more tools to let viewers engage with how the races progress.

No body cares after the Olympics is over. It's dead until 2024.

Can you imagine the uproar among the viewing public if a network covered NFL games the way they cover a marathon? The home team is down by 3 points with 2 minutes to play and the ball on their own 40, and the TV coverage cuts to a two-minute prerecorded piece about the defensive tackle's adoptive mother? The problem is, it's a chicken-and-egg thing. Currently there doesn't exist a large audience of folks who actually want to watch professional runners run a marathon, so the networks have to pad their coverage with all kinds of "human interest" stories.

I am usually inclined to be a contrarian when there is a letsrun pile on, but I was shocked when I tuned in to watch the men's start and the camera on the motorcycle (or truck or whatever) kept starting off badly pixelated and would gradually come into focus. It is 2021. My 10 year old son watches youtubers who are capable of doing better camera work with some iphones and gopros. If I was a bored sports fan who had never watched a marathon before and tuned in for that, I would have immediately flipped channels.

I remember watching the NY marathon in the 1970s when it was on Wide World of Sports on ABC. Back then, there weren't a lot of choices on a Sunday morning. Also, with Rodgers dominating, people in the US actually cared about the marathon.

Today, you can watch professional cornhole on TV. In order to build an audience for a sport that is dominated by E. Africans that takes over two hours to complete and that has very subtle changes in pace that are about as much action as you will see is not something that is going to happen with the kind of broadcast that ESPN did.

What does it mean to "grow the sport"? Participation numbers are high in road races, track, and cross country at various levels. Do you mean more spectators? More sponsorship money? More events on TV?

One big point on "growing the sport":

T&F will always be a niche spectator sport, I don't think there's scope to expand it hugely. Instead, World Athletics, Abbott, and national athletics organizations, as well as broadcasters should focus on better serving the fans they already have. Get more data on screen, let us know who is on what pace, whether they are on for a PR/NR or course record. Use picture-in-picture more often. Just make the experience a pure nerd-fest for T&F junkies, just like they do for the major sports. Every Olympics or marathon, the commentators talk like their audience have never seen a race before. That's why Kara Goucher has been so good, she commentators for running junkies, not people who only watch once every 4 years.

I believe we need to move towards say 10k loops. There is too much distance for cameras to cover and cameras just can't move around effectively. I believe the Euro style cross is more fun because of shorter loops (2k, 1.5k). So Maybe run the top X runners based on meeting a seed time or equivalent and then an in race cutoff for anyone getting lapped. The next day run your 50K, 60, 70k + locals on the regular course with local coverage. If it is more fun to watch, that will result in more spectators and more sponsorship value. The current system until late in some races is unwatchable.

That was arguably the WORST coverage of a WMM I have ever seen... the second was (insert ANY US based marathon here). I nearly turned it off, and probably would have if the women's race wasn't so tight.

Watch any of the other WMM's coverage and it's inconceivable that here in the US, they STILL can't figure it out.

mando wrote:

I believe we need to move towards say 10k loops. There is too much distance for cameras to cover and cameras just can't move around effectively. I believe the Euro style cross is more fun because of shorter loops (2k, 1.5k). So Maybe run the top X runners based on meeting a seed time or equivalent and then an in race cutoff for anyone getting lapped. The next day run your 50K, 60, 70k + locals on the regular course with local coverage. If it is more fun to watch, that will result in more spectators and more sponsorship value. The current system until late in some races is unwatchable.

I totally disagree.

Watch the most boring stage of any year's Tour de France-- a flat stage with no breakaways and a bunch sprint won by the odds-on favorite-- and it's a million times more compelling that any NYC marathon broadcast, even when the race is close. The TDF broadcasters (whether the NBC crew or various Euro broadcasts) don't accept the idea that there can be a boring race. They MAKE the race exciting because they know all of the athletes and all of the storylines. They focus on the leaders but then they take you back in the pack to show you someone falling off or surging. They keep the camera on the finish after the winner crosses to show you gaps to the next people, and then they talk about those gaps and what they mean.

When the race is boring, they show you and tell you about cool stuff that's on the route. Honestly, that's one of the things that drives me the craziest about the NYC marathon and it has nothing to do with race itself. It's supposed to be this huge showcase for all five boroughs and they never even talk about the city! Tell us about Williamsburg, or the 59th Street bridge, or 5th Avenue, or the Central Park reservoir. Talk about anything! Instead it's just, "OK, here's the lead women, Chepchirir looks good, Keptoo looks good, we'll see who wins." "OK, who do you think has the wheels to win?" "I guess we'll see." It's awful.

Lance Armstrong became a star because of a boatload of doping, sure, but also because of the TDF broadcasts. Don't tell me that you can make a three-week race with six-hours days compelling but you can't figure out a way to inject some excitement into a two-hour race.

mando wrote:

I believe we need to move towards say 10k loops. There is too much distance for cameras to cover and cameras just can't move around effectively. I believe the Euro style cross is more fun because of shorter loops (2k, 1.5k). So Maybe run the top X runners based on meeting a seed time or equivalent and then an in race cutoff for anyone getting lapped. The next day run your 50K, 60, 70k + locals on the regular course with local coverage. If it is more fun to watch, that will result in more spectators and more sponsorship value. The current system until late in some races is unwatchable.

Throwing away the course for the sake of better TV coverage is definitely NOT the answer. Are they to do that with all the WMMs? Ugh! How boring would that be?!

1. There is no money in the sport. Nobody is watching. It's a super niche event. Even if you did it right the realistic max potential viewership doesn't move the needle.

2. The media/audio/visual logistics are extremely difficult. The "playing field" is literally 26 freaking miles long, outside, on city streets. Now compare this to setting up two stationary cameras on a tennis court or a basketball court.

If #1 were good enough then people would figure out #2. But it's not. End of story.

Who wants to watch marathons, anyway? I bet it's a slim minority of marathon runners who are interested to tune in and basically nobody else. Marathons are lame as spectator sports, much like yacht racing.

Somehow the tour de france, over multiple stages and much tougher terrain, gets superb live coverage but this gets garbage. Pathetic.

The problem with the marathon as a televised spectator sport is that there isn’t enough tension. In most televised sports, there are several moments in a game/match that have the potential to really affect the outcome. Those moments create tension and then get resolved (the putt goes in, the goalie makes the save, etc) over and over which keeps the event exciting. With things like Tour De France and auto racing, the tension is in the speed/risk of crash so that any move within the pack is exciting. These moments are too infrequent in a marathon.

In a normal marathon, what happens in the first hour doesn’t typically impact the result in a major way unless there is an injury. From hour one to two, there may be a few moves and a winnowing down of the legitimate lead pack, which is interesting to knowledgeable running fans but doesn’t provide much drama for the average viewer unless there is some obvious fan favorite making the move. Then there may or may not be an interesting race for the final 10 or so minutes. Even if there is an interesting race, unless there is a good storyline (underdog hanging with favorites, hometown hero, etc) the a average person still isn’t going to care.

No amount of “Picture in Picture” coverage, reduction of commercials, expert analysis or anything else that may appeal to hardcore running fans is going to move the needle for total viewership. The only way you’re going to see an uptick in viewership in the USA is if two or more Americans come along that can hang in the front pack and also have the charisma to become tv/social media stars.

88888882yysvggg wrote:

Somehow the tour de france, over multiple stages and much tougher terrain, gets superb live coverage but this gets garbage. Pathetic.

Exactly. When there is enough interest in the product, then production will find a way, even if it's expensive and logistically very difficult. But there is almost zero interest in marathon running on TV. It's basic economics.

For whatever reason, people like watching the TDF, both in person and on TV. Worldwide. It doesn't seem that much different than watching a marathon, but it is to a lot of people. And I don't think it's because the production quality is better. You can make the marathon production quality whatever you want and I don't think you move the needle much.

Look at what Macca did with triathlon. Superleague. They tried anything and everything in terms of making it as interesting as possible. Changing the races around. Uniforms. Country affiliations. Video quality. Playing up the human element and the personality of the racers. They left no stone unturned. And I still don't think anyone cares. Maybe the numbers say different, but I doubt it. Most sports are participation sports, not spectator sports.

88888882yysvggg wrote:

Somehow the tour de france, over multiple stages and much tougher terrain, gets superb live coverage but this gets garbage. Pathetic.

This is true. But one big difference is the number of racing days that cycling has compared to road running. Each of the three Grand Tours consists of 21 days of racing. Then there are the six day races and the dozen or so one day Classics. This means the broadcast crew has something like 90 days a year to hone their product. Hence the better camera positioning, better catching of key movements, better commentary and better"fill" during the boring parts of each race.

Whereas for road running there are maybe six or seven races covered live in North America each year. This will usually be done by a local crew which probably consists of something like 50% first timers trying to learn the job as they do it. Hence the motorcycle cameras pointing at the asphalt, the sky or just our of focus. The director not knowing which camera he should be cutting to and the commentators blabbering rather than commentating. To let them all off the hook just switch to some human interest feature or a beat reporter on the street corner interviewing spectators because at least they are stationary and you just have to worry about one camera.

Unfortunately there are not enough races to create a professional crew who can properly cover an event. We basically get the rookie team for each event.

I loved this thread. It inspired me to write the following article:

https://twitter.com/letsrundotcom/status/1458538861190008835