For the most part I thought it was pretty good. I chrome cast it to a large high def TV and it looked great most of the time. I had to restart it every hour or so because it would get laggy. The transition to part 2 was a cluster though.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

It worked really well for me, although the transition for part 1 to part 2 (why was that even necessary) was an absolute mess. Lost about 10 minutes of coverage or so.

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

I thought the coverage was really good, I have no complaints.

Some of the talking annoyed me so ended up muting it but that's a different story.

I watched the first few hours through my chrome browser on my laptop. had to refresh every 45min or so. Not sure if this was my laptop or the facebook interface but when I switched to my XBOX one and watched on the dedicated Facebook Now app it was very good. I have found this app to work much better than watching on facebook through a browser. Same complaints as other on the "part 1 to part 2" transition.

it sucked for me. Would get about 5 seconds of audio, then cutout - repeatedly throughout the day. Maddening.

I enjoyed it especially for the amount of money that I had to spend to watch. I was able to watch without issue using Firefox on my laptop. I actually had a better connection on my IPhone.

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All I Wanted Was A Pepsi, Just One Pepsi

Team Zoot, Team Zoot Mid-Atlantic

This was my experience as well. Though I started by trying to use the facebook watch app on a fire stick and that crashed every few minutes until I gave up on it. But the chromecast worked fine with periodic refreshes.

Overall very satisfied with the coverage we were able to get.

Interesting that is says "20 million views" to the facebook watch broadcast.

During the broadcast in the top left corner it showed number of people viewing which seemed to hover between 40k-60k. I guess they are counting all the times we had to hit refresh? And changing from one stream to the next?

Wish I could watch all Sport for free via Social media, I hope this is the future!

Facebook should invest some serious money into sports rights as it appears it's not very popular with the kids these days, could be its future.

Would be a pleasure watching PPV go bust!

Coverage was pretty good, overall.

Could have used more balance with the men's/women's races. Very men's race heavy.

The downside for me was the "commentary" during the last hour and not keeping the camera on the finishers during that time. The best part of the last hour is seeing the finishers and hearing Mike R. tell their story or talk to them. Hopefully they fix this next year.

I’m about an 90 mins into the coverage, couldn’t watch it live as I was racing so don’t have an opinion on the stream quality, however I have some comments on the footage, camera work and basic production quality....

So far it’s shockingly bad, it’s like amateur hour.... examples
1) they missed the start of the women’s pro race, the male AG And the female AG start....
2) for 40 mins on the swim they commentators had no idea who was swimming in the male front pack other than the leader even though they had a guy in a boat right alongside them.
3) They missed virtually every male pro going through transition choosing instead to focus on the female leader
4) They missed virtually every female pro going through transition
5) the commentators seemed to have no idea who they were looking at and the editor would cut to a different shot in the middle of a sentence. I’ve no complaints on the commentators as they had no control on what was shown which makes their job very difficult
6) no split time graphics....no one seemed to know who was where in the race other than word of mouth..... I bet you had a much better idea of the state of the race by using the tracker than the live footage

It’s not as if they didn’t spend money on the coverage, there was at least 2 choppers up at all times, a boat on the water, and countless camera bikes it seems like they just have no idea what parts of the race are interesting to the viewers. It’s like they have a watch and do 5 mins pro men, then 5 mins pro women, token AG shot and repeat....

This has to improve.... if this sport wants to increase popularity they need to sort this out as compared to all the other endurance sports eg pro cycling the coverage is very amateurish.

All those cameras are not for us and our online coverage, those are most likely the network cameras who are allowing raw feeds to come to the booth. And as you say, they dont get to control that, just take what they see and try and make a show of it. I do think in this day and age, athletes bikes at the very least could have trackers that are programmed to tell the booth where they are, and what are the gaps to other trackers. Suppose you could have a foot pod do the same thing for the run too. That would be easy and not a ton of money, sure would tighten up the mistakes during the live coverage, and help those of us watching be more involved..

I followed the race from beginning to the end on FB live.

I do not have FB account, I'm located in France.

It was great, except the first few minutes of part 1 and part 2, freezing a bit. I had the same freezing issue with IM Italy, also at the beginning of part 1 and 2.

Associated with the IM Tracker, it give a great experience. Very happy to be able to follow, as TV coverage doesn't exist.

As I said in the other thread, the quality was terrible and made it basically unwatchable on my computer and phone. Same story from my friends.

Godawful. I would have preferred a scrambled channel on an old TV because I would at least have consistent audio. Please, take my money and let me pay for a decent stream.

Vastly superior to previous years and the quality minus the transition was actually really good.

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Team Zoot 2023

Was unable to pick it up. And yet last year was flawless. Go figure. But I got a lot done Sat doing other things.

WOW. I had no issue other than the transition like others from Part 1 to Part 2.

Data is interesting

52 million saw it via facebook but the data says only 225,483 actually clicked and watched.

For the $ that Ironman put into it, I wouldn't think that's the best return on investment.

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On my Firestick I had to restart the coverage every 10 minutes, maybe might internet speed isnt good enough? Netflix always works. Finally gave up and watched it on Sunday. First time not watching live in a while.

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Pain or damage don't end the world, or despair, or beatings. The world ends when you're dead, until then you're due for more punishment. Stand it like a man. And give some back.

I'd have to agree. I watched Kona end to end for the 1st time in a long time. I loved not having commercials. The switch from pt1 to pt2 of the broadcast could have been smoother - but all in all, I have to say that I now expect to have this setup EVERY year. Fuck NBC sports and their antiquated format. Never going back.

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Next races on the schedule: none at the moment

" I loved not having commercials."

this

The connection figure written top left of my screen was mostly around 50 to 60k (50 000 to 60 000), not 52 millions.
Coherent with 225 k globally (some rotation over the 8 hours).

Technically it was very good for me, watching in the UK via chromecast to my HD TV. Picture was good quality, sound good, very few pauses for re-buffering. The only real issue I had was the same as everybody else between Part 1 and Part 2 where I lost 5 or 10 minutes (good excuse to go take a break!!).

The real issue, as it is every year, is the total lack of appropriate context, updates and statistics. The guys rarely seem to be talking about the most relevant event at the relevant time. What this thing is crying out for more than anything else is a TDF style graphic showing the relative position of the main players.

Breathe of fresh air when Jan came on and actually discussed the tactics in play.

Coupled with the fact that there was no reliable leaderboard on the IM page meant it was pretty difficult to see how the race was unfolding in real-time. I actually took more from the thread here on ST then I did from the official coverage. As usual, the best way to follow the race was to stay on the official slowtwitch thread and use the telly for pictures!!

Agree an imbalance between MPRO and FPRO coverage. Majority MPRO coverage whilst the more incredible events were unfolding over in FPRO.

But all that said, I'm still very grateful that I get to follow this race live each year, even if staying up 9 hours to watch does wipe out the previous 2 weeks calorie deficit I'd been working hard for...

monty wrote:

All those cameras are not for us and our online coverage, those are most likely the network cameras who are allowing raw feeds to come to the booth. And as you say, they dont get to control that, just take what they see and try and make a show of it. I do think in this day and age, athletes bikes at the very least could have trackers that are programmed to tell the booth where they are, and what are the gaps to other trackers. Suppose you could have a foot pod do the same thing for the run too. That would be easy and not a ton of money, sure would tighten up the mistakes during the live coverage, and help those of us watching be more involved..

It's called the Qurq Collector, still not sure why they went away from using it. IMO it was great, although slightly too big. One would assume tech has developed enough in the last 3-4 years to make it smaller though?

https://www.quarq.com/product/quarq-qollector/#sm.0000q0irkm4jydappqs1fb7faljxn


Even broadcasted HR/Power as well if the athlete opt'd in, and IM should/could make that mandatory if you are using those devices.

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-Brad Williams
Website | Twitter: @BW_Tri |Instagram: @BW_Tri | Strava | Co-Founder & Coach at: KIS Coaching
Partnered with: Zoot Sports | Precision Fuel &Hydration | ISM

When reported out Facebook viewing numbers, I sure hope Mr. Messick saw the story in the Wall Street Journal yesterday about how Facebook inflated these numbers and did nothing to correct the error when they found it.

I ended up watching it on Ironman's Livestream channel on my AppleTV and that worked way better for my purposes than Facebook (it was the same coverage, just on a different platform).