Based on a recent report from the European Broadcasting Union, the TV and marketing rights holder for this year’s FIS World Ski Championships, the FIS World Ski Championships 2009 were seen by more than 1.1 billion viewers worldwide. While more than 478 million cumulative viewers watched the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships from Val d’Isère (FRA), the multi-faceted (live, delayed, news or highlights) coverage from Liberec (CZE) was enjoyed by almost 666 million global TV viewers.

22 and 17 national broadcasters broadcasted the action from Val d’Isère (FRA) and Liberec (CZE), respectively, along with the 69 Eurosport and Eurosport Asia-Pacific nations. The top Val d’Isère events in terms of live audience in a single market were the men’s and ladies’ slaloms broadcast by ZDF: while the men’s second run was seen by 3.57 million German viewers, the first run recorded 3.07 million viewers and the ladies’ second slalom run collected just short of 3 million fans in front of their TVs. The top Liberec events with the greatest national live audience were the men’s normal and large hill Ski Jumping events on Poland’s TVP1 with almost 5.0 and 4.4 million viewers, respectively, followed by the men’s large hill event on Germany’s ZDF with 4.0 million fans.

The top market share for any live programs from Val d’Isere was the men’s downhill race in Switzerland where SF2 posted 74% market share closely followed by the same race on Austrian ORF1 with 73.7% market share. The best market share ratings for any Liberec events were seen by Finland’s YLE which recorded market shares between 82.8% and 81.3% for the top three cross-country events with the ladies’ 10km classical leading the way.

The 665 million total cumulative viewers seen by Val d’Isère 2009 represent the highest viewer total on record, and this with the cancellation of the Nations’ Team Event which helped enhance the viewer numbers for the 2005 and 2007 championships. 20.5% of the viewers watched the live broadcasts. The total broadcasting time transmitted from the 2009 Alpine World Ski Championships was also a new record, again despite the Nations’ Team Event cancellation, with more than 1038 hours of coverage.

The FIS Nordic World Ski Championships in Liberec (CZE) also saw the highest number of live viewers ever recorded, even compared to Oberstdorf 2005 and Lahti 2001. With a total of twenty medal events, Liberec 2009 posted a new record cumulative broadcast duration with more than 771 hours of coverage of which 70.3% was shown live and 25.9% delayed.

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