Experience Kiel Week live from home

by Kieler Woche on 23 Jun 2013 From Kiel to the world - this is the motto of Kiel Weeks marketer for the medialisation. The world's largest sail racing event offers fair sports on the water, entertainment ashore and more and more distribution channels for sailing fans to experience the Kiel Week, even if they cannot be on site.

With the invention of a race course with media focus, where different classes will be competing during the week, the utilization of mobile cameras in the air and on the water as well as the graphical visualisation, the races are presented in a fascinating way with comments in two languages to increase last year's TV contact numbers even more.

For Nikolaus Rickers, Director of the agency Point of Sailing, the medialisation is a key task for the Kiel Week. „We focus on newspapers, magazines and online editorials, that we feed with information. Furthermore we produce TV material in HD quality via Kieler Woche.TV, which is broadcasted live on the stage in Schilksee, via the internet and DVB-T channel 52', explains Rickers. The live programs and video clips of highest quality are also accessible on the website and can be included as a link on editorial online platforms.

In the last year contacts via the self-produced program of Kieler Woche.TV were around one million spectators. The aim is to reach about 1.5 million now. The circumstances to increase contact numbers are good. Because various restaurants and stages in town got equipped with a DVB-T receivers to be able to show the program. International access should increase as well, since the TV material will for the first time produced with an English commentary next to the German version.

The effort to create moving pictures from the races is huge. The race course 'hotel' right in front of Schilksee is the TV broadcasting course this year, where different classes will compete every day. A specially created radio relay and WLAN network across the course is supposed to ensure failure-free transfer of pictures ashore. Not to miss out on any exciting moment, up to eight cameras are used: Three camera boats circle around the fleet, a helicopter is in the air, and two drones are equipped with cameras. And even on board, a camera on the helmet and an onboard camera transfer TV pictures.

In the TV container ashore the media material is mixed together and prepared with graphical illustrations of the boats with GPS tracking systems. The moderators are well known from the ZDF, Nils Kaben and Alexander Ruda. For the international audience separate English clips are created.

With the introduction of the TV production by Audi, we have made a major step in the medialisation, the second is using SAP technologies,' says Rickers. The Kiel Week partners want to do good to the sailing sport, but also be recognised worldwide. A clear six-digit amount is spent on it.

Kieler Woche.TV is transmitted on all racing days live from 12 to 14:30 and with the highlights from 17 to 17:45. In addition, there are several TV stations producing their own program in Schilksee. 13 million spectators were reached in 2012, this year the expected number is between 15 and 20 million.

You can access Kieler Woche.TV via the internet here or here. The time-limited DVB-T channel 52 has been activated since Thursday and can be found by re-starting the search channel function. First broadcast programs have started this Saturday.

The Open Channel (Offener Kanal) also transmits pictures. With the cooperation with Servus TV (an Austrian private channel), Nautic Chanel in the international range and the media partner NDR in Germany, ARD and ZDF as well as numerous inquiries from Germany (SAT1, RTL, Deutsche Welle), Austria (ORF) and other European channels, the TV presence is higher than ever. The event is also medially represented on YouTube (kiwoonline) and Facebook (KielerWoche).