Universal Sports set to grow ski racing TV coverage

Ski racing fans in 11 of the largest television markets in the United States will be able to kick back on their couch, click the remote and watch World Cup alpine racing—a portion of it live from Europe—on the television set this winter.
    The Universal Sports Network will be their channel of choice. The network focuses on Olympic-related sports programming and combines the resources of the former World Championship Sports Network (WCSN) with NBC Sports. The network will now be distributed to more than 30 million households after last week’s announcement that nine NBC Universal owned-and-operated television stations have added it to their digital tier cable packages.
     Universal Sports will now be available in the following markets: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, Washington D.C., San Diego, Dallas-Fort Worth, Hartford-New Haven, Conn., Omaha, Neb., and Las Vegas.
SKI RACING FANS in 11 of the largest television markets in the United States will be able to kick back on their couch, click the remote and watch World Cup alpine racing—a portion of it live from Europe—on the television set this winter.
    The Universal Sports Network will be their channel of choice. The network focuses on Olympic-related sports programming and combines the resources of the former World Championship Sports Network (WCSN) with NBC Sports. The network will now be distributed to more than 30 million households after last week’s announcement that nine NBC Universal owned-and-operated television stations have added it to their digital tier cable packages.
    Universal Sports will now be available in the following markets: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, Washington D.C., San Diego, Dallas-Fort Worth, Hartford-New Haven, Conn., Omaha, Neb., and Las Vegas.
    “International ski racing will finally be available on TV. We might not be in one of your markets or cities right now, but we’ll continue to be aggressive in securing distribution and that’s what you’re seeing,” says T.K. Gore of Universal Sports. “It’s very difficult for a new network to get distributed and that’s what we found with WCSN. The fact is, we’ve found a lot of success in distributing this new network.”   
   It helps to have a behemoth like NBC Universal in your corner when it comes to distribution. WCSN was able to nudge its way into a very limited number of cable markets, but it added up to less than a million households. WCSN’s primary platform for coverage of ski racing was the Internet, and WCSN.com streamed every alpine World Cup race either live or same day-delayed on the Web site. Diehard fans could punch up any race last season, from the opener at Sölden to the Finals at Bormio, and watch every racer come down the hill on their computer screen. Sure, fans often had to be hunched over their laptops for hours at a time, Gore says, but it was the only medium they could utilize in the United States.
    “We’re talking about a core base of skiing fans here who feel like they’ve been underserved. Now they can tune to the TV channel and watch,” Gore says. “The ski fan base really wants to see racing on TV. It’s just nice that with this new partnership with NBC, you’re literally seeing distribution of our 24-hour network.”

More details of Universal Sports’ coverage plans for the 2008-09 ski racing season:

— Every World Cup alpine race will be shown both online and on cable on Universal Sports. A specific schedule of which races will be shown live has not yet been released, Gore says. Last season, 12 races—including the Hahnenkamm downhill—were streamed live over the Internet on wcsn.com. Stay tuned to skiracing.com throughout October for programming updates.

— Live and on-demand video coverage of alpine, nordic, jumping, freestyle and snowboarding will be available at UniversalSports.com

— Gore says the network has not finalized coverage plans for this season’s World Championships, including the alpine event at Val d’Isere, France. Stay tuned to skiracing.com for more.