Worldwide Louis Vuitton Cup audience soars on TV and Internet

by Ivor Wilkins, BMW Oracle Racing Media on 17 May 2007 Worldwide interest in the Louis Vuitton Cup and America’s Cup is soaring – with huge international television audiences and higher than expected traffic onto the event website and through to the individual team websites.

This 32nd America's Cup is the most widely televised edition in the history of the event, according to a statement from ACM. As the second Round Robin of the Louis Vuitton Cup came to a close last week, over 30 rights-holding broadcasters, covering all the major territories in the world, have been showing the action. CCTV is providing coverage of the event in China.

In Spain, TVE and Canal 9 are providing live action from all the races, while coverage is also strong in Italy (La7), France (Canal+), Scandinavia (Viasat) and Germany (ARD and ZDF).

In the United States, Versus (formerly OLN) began live coverage with the semi-finals and CBS will broadcast 1-hour wrap-up highlight programmes nationwide at the conclusion of the Louis Vuitton Cup (17 June) and the America's Cup Match (8 July). In the United Kingdom, BskyB is showing live races. For Switzerland, the national public broadcasters (SF, TSR and TSI) have announced extended coverage of the America's Cup Match starting on June 23rd.

Over 150 countries are receiving the TV broadcasts produced by ACTV in Valencia thanks to pan-regional coverage provided by Canal+ Horizons and Supersport (Africa), ESPN (Latin America), Al Jazeera (Middle East), Viasat (Scandinavia & Baltic) and Eurosport Asia. Additionally, BBC World will broadcast a series of vignettes and long form programmes in collaboration with Louis Vuitton and AC Management.

In all, America's Cup three-month television coverage will be seen by millions of viewers around the world. Almost 200 hours of live coverage is being produced by ACTV, as well as more than 50 daily highlight programmes and almost 100 news feeds.

The Internet is also attracting large audiences. According to the latest figures, the americascup.com website had an average of 140,000 unique visitors during racing days. This exceeds the target figure 100,000 and equals the number of visitors to the site for the entire period September 2004 to December 2006.

From January to April this year, The BMW ORACLE Racing team website – www.bmworacleracing.com – was the top choice for visitors clicking through from the event site, capturing 12% of that traffic, followed by Luna Rossa Challenge on 11%, Alinghi and United Internet Team Germany on 10% each.

The unique visitor count tells how many different people there are in your audience during a specific time period. A unique visitor is someone with a unique address entering a website for the first time in the review period. A visitor who returns within the same period is not counted twice.

The BMW ORACLE Racing Team Blog readership has also soared to over 20,000 unique visitors per month (and more than twice that in page views), and continues to climb with each passing week -- far exceeding expectations. Moreover, the average visit length is still well over two minutes, a gratifyingly high stat that shows our visitors are more than just 'click throughs'.

'It is great to see the growth in interest in the America’s Cup around the world,' said BMW ORACLE Racing marketing director, Mirko Groeschner.

This growth in interest is an important measure of the market for sponsors and backers, not just in gauging the return on their investment for this Cup cycle, but also in making decisions going forward into the next.

The figures reveal a 40% increase over the audience at the peak of the 2003 Cup in Auckland, New Zealand. The America’s Cup is attracting 30% more visitors than the motorcyle racing site motogp.com, based on the most recent assessment. Football (soccer) remains the world leader, with an astonishing 5 million unique visitors a day to the fifaworldcup.com site.

Understandably, the America’s Cup interest has soared with the start of the Louis Vuitton Cup. In terms of overall visitors to the official website, the numbers rocketed from approximately 750,000 in March this year, to just under 4.5 million in April.

By language, the breakdown is 39% English, 32% Italian, 15% French and 14% Spanish.

Although there is no German version of the official website, Cup interest from Germany is clearly very high. With a major German partner in BMW and a main German sponsor in Allianz, BMW ORACLE Racing has made a significant push into the German market.

Having a German team, United Internet Team Germany, also competing in the event for the first time ever has clearly also drawn the fans. 'The figures demonstrate that the interest from Italy and Germany has grown significantly, while the Spanish and English audiences remain very strong,' said Groeschner. 'It establishes that the America’s Cup is a truly global event.'

The preceding was penned by Ivor Wilkins (NZL), a veteran Cup aficionado and author. He serves as 'editor-in-chief' for many BMW ORACLE Racing team releases and other publications, including the highly acclaimed annual team 'yearbooks' called Quest for the Cup (2005) and The Journey Continues (2006).