Infront, the international sports marketing agency, will continue to distribute international media rights to the World Athletics Indoor Tour’s top-tier series after striking a six-year partnership renewal with governing body World Athletics.
The renewal builds on a three-year partnership that started in 2020 and covers international rights to all World Athletics Indoor Tour Gold series meetings until 2029.
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This year's Gold series, which started in Germany’s Karlsruhe on January 27, features seven meetings and will conclude on February 25, 2023, with the Birmingham World Indoor Tour Final in the UK.
It is being shown again in over 70 territories in deals brokered by Infront as part of its original agreement.
Infront doubled the event's worldwide coverage last year to 70 territories after striking agreements with 22 broadcasters ahead of the 2022 edition, including SVT (Sweden), TVE (Spain), CMore (Finland), Match TV (Russia), ESPN, Direct TV, Flo Sports, and Flow Sports (North, Central, and South America), ORF (Austria), Arena (Balkans), Polsat Group (Poland), and Sky Italia (Italy).
World Athletics chief executive Jon Ridgeon said: “Working with Infront over the past three seasons has been instrumental in allowing World Athletics to open up to new markets.
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By GlobalData“Their extensive network of broadcast contacts and deep understanding of where the sport is headed has helped create a positive and productive relationship. Thanks to Infront’s efforts, the Tour has been able to reach new audiences and continues to grow.”
Julien Ternisien, Infront senior vice president of summer sports, added: “Our partnership with World Athletics is built on trust and a shared vision for the growth of athletics, and our efforts on the Continental Tour have helped us boost the exposure of the World Indoor Tour.”
Infront, which is owned by China’s Wanda Sports Group, already has a 10-year international media rights agreement for the World Athletics Continental Tour, the secondary outdoor series, and is set to take on the elite Wanda Diamond League, in a five-year deal starting in 2025.
Under that wide-ranging deal, signed in September 2019, Wanda became the title sponsor of the Diamond League, with Infront taking on media rights to the two outdoor series in what World Athletics president Sebastian Coe described as “the biggest single commercial partnership in the history of athletics."
The Indoor Tour introduced four tiers of competition in 2022 – Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Challenger – in a mirror of the World Athletics Continental Tour. For 2023, the Gold lever scoring disciplines are the men’s 400m, 1500m, 60m hurdles, high jump, and long jump, as well as the women’s 800m, 3,000/5,000m, 60m, pole vault, triple jump, and shot put.
Gold meetings on the World Athletics Indoor Tour offer a minimum of $7,000 in prize money for each discipline, including $3,000 for the winner.
