The strongest ever World Cup ratings and expanded internet streaming of FIBT World Cup and World Championship races were the highlights of the FIBT’s 2008-2009 activities for television and new media. The Intersport World Cup audience rose to 537.56  million viewers, the highest since the data was collected by the media research company International Sportanalysen GmbH.  Combined with a World Championship audience of 131.64 million, the FIBT reached over 669 million viewers during the season.

It was the third season of using a sales model that provides for exclusive national distribution. FIBT television rights are sold by the international agency Infront Sports and Media of Zug, Switzerland. The FIBT has exclusively produced its own World Cup and World Championship broadcasts since 1997.

There were three initiatives for the past season that resulted in the most comprehensive coverage ever in the United Kingdom and in the Unites States. British Eurosport covered the entire FIBT season, with most events airing live.  In the USA rights holder NBC Sports used its sister network Universal Sports to provide the most extensive American coverage ever with 45 hours of original programming.  Universal Sports is the result of NBC gaining control of WCSN, a predominantly streaming internet broadcaster prior to 2008. Universal Sports is now available to over 50 million households in the USA and holds the rights to many Olympic summer and winter sports.

Germany continued to be the No. 1 market for bobsleigh with alternating programs on the public broadcasting networks ARD and ZDF. The German networks feature weekly on site live and delayed coverage each week.  The No. 2 market for FIBT sports is Russia, where coverage is shown on the national sports channel RTR.

Other European networks providing season-long coverage were:  SSR/SRG (Switzerland), RAI (Italy), Canal+ Sports (France and over 50 nations in Africa, the Caribbean, and Oceania), TVE (Spain), Polsat (Poland), Viasat (six Scandinavian countries plus a new Baltic channel in Latvia). ORF (Austria) covered the Igls World Cup, while Chello Central Europe distributed the World Championship on its Romanian and Hungarian channels. Additional outlets were CBC Sports (Canada), MBC (Korea), and Gillette World Sports, the weekly global syndicated program that airs in 180 countries.

Same day delayed streaming of FIBT races with English commentary was shown across the globe, with  fans being able to watch the FIBT races on the for the first time in Germany, Switzerland and Austria.  The races are accessed through the FIBT web portal www.fibt.com.  The streaming signal was carried in the USA by www.universalsports.com and in Canada by www.cbcsports.ca.

The FIBT generated over 969 hours of broadcasting time for the 40 World Cup competitions and the six World Championship events.  Two-Man and Four-Man bobsleigh led the way again with 308 million World Cup viewers and over 82 million for the World Championships.   

• 2008-2009 FIBT-TV report Summary
• 2007-2008 FIBT-TV Report Summary
• 2006-2007 FIBT-TV Report Summary