Cycle News

VOL. 51 ISSUE 24 JUNE 17, 2014 P131 you want to watch it? The answer is not exactly. But we're getting there. Ask Google or one of your techy geek friends (and if you don't have one of those, I suggest finding one) and they can point you in the right di- rection. Or just go low tech and break out the 'ol antenna to get local TV. For motorcycle race fans, however, there are more and more options. MotoGP has been doing it for years. For a fee you can watch all you want of Mo- toGP – race action, highlights, interviews, press conferences, archived races – at your leisure on your mobile device, computer and even TV, thanks to WiFi and Dorna. And with Dorna's pur- chase of World Superbike, the production-based World Champi- onship has also upped its online streaming game. In Motocross the MXGP World Championship has their MXGP- tv.com that streams races live for you around the globe and in the U.S Motocross and Supercross practice and qualifying is also streamed to give fans non-stop action in addition to the race cov- erage they can find on their TVs. On the road racing and flat track side in the U.S., AMA Pro Racing offers fanchoice.tv, giv- ing you live streaming coverage of practice, qualifying and racing. So in the business of racing, is TV still a big deal? Of course it is, even if all these options for streaming make it easier to tell cable to take a hike, TV is still mainstream. And TV also contin- ues to serve as a great measuring stick as to the health of a series. If you see a lot of shiny colorful 18-wheelers with a lot of spon- sors on them here in America, it's a safe bet to say they have a good TV package. Box vans and small trailers usually equals no TV. Supercross is alive, well and pumping here in the States with live coverage on a major sports cable network (Fox Sports 1) for almost every one of its 17 rounds. And if it wasn't, it was on Fox Sports 2 and re-aired in HD on Fox Sports 1 the following day. And for the outdoor season, AMA Pro Motocross has all of its motos live on TV spread out on two different channels: MavTV and NBC Sports. So for those moto-junkies out there with four hours of their Saturdays to spare, they can watch complete race coverage of the Outdoor Na- tionals as it's happening. Amaz- ing, right? They also have on- line streaming. The best of both worlds. In contrast, AMA Superbike racing has no TV, but complete online coverage and… it's free. Amazing right? Well, not exactly. While streaming is the future and has the benefit of growing your sport's audience because it has a reach that cable packages can't provide, the lack of TV has those who love American road racing very worried. Because the reality is that right now the people who pay the bucks – the spon- sors – still look to TV to get their money's worth. And that's even after being able to provide solid data of who's watching what, where, and for how long is poten- tially more accurate info for said sponsors. So Supercross and Motocross are alive and well and pumping in the United States and its live TV package is a big help in that. Lets face it, it doesn't matter whether it's a sports series or a reality TV series, you have to have the hook to keep on watching. And if you stop watching for a while, you have less motivation to make the effort to watch it in the future. And if you're not watching the sport, you may just stop follow- ing it completely. At that point, you're less likely to read about it, or even look at pictures from it. At the end of the day the In- ternet has not killed the cable- star yet. TV is still king, but on- line streaming is building a lot of momentum. So it's important for sports series that haven't al- ready jumped on the streaming bandwagon to get on it. And start looking at a broader definition of viewership beyond television. And what better way to increase viewership than to make it acces- sible to anyone with a device and a Wi-Fi signal.

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