The past years the main KONA PRO tend to start their season with one of the following races Oceanside 70.3, Utah 70.3, IMTX, IMSA...

IMNZ is one of those races that is far from North America or Europe and too early for attracting many PRO. Since 2001 it has been won 15 times by NZ (Cameron Brown, Branden Currie and Terenzo Bozzone)... It's expensive to travel down there time consuming (travelling) and jetlag, not really worth cost/benefit for most of PRO.

As for the coverage of the race, I would assume the same thing sending a Team to cover the event too expensive. You probably might get limited coverage but don't expect a Facebook live coverage for 10 hours. Finally, the IMNZ it's on Saturday and with the difference in TimeZone from North America, it's basically Friday morning 6:45am... most of the people are working!

I might be wrong but the interest and benefits for Ironman Corporation look very low to invest in a full coverage of this event. Only reason that this would happen is that New Zealand Tourism Office would paid for it.

And yet on the women's side (which you seemed to have misplaced)...
International competitors have fared well.

---

#swimmingmatters
Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind.
The Doctor (#12)

You may need to select the Ironman Oceania site then go to the race feed. Not sure about live coverage of the race, but there's a ton of updates of the buildup and of course the usual athlete tracking via the Ironman Oceania App.

I think he means a big announcement of the 15 or so 2019 races that they will be covering this year. Similar to their big roll-out last year.

If the so, not seen or heard anything yet.

---

My race site: https://racesandplaces.wixsite.com/racesandplaces