Hiding your product behind a proprietary paywall is a good way to ensure that the number of people tuning in will forever remain low. Only the most die-hard triathlon fans will pay for Triathlonlive, which means you’re losing any casual fans.
One of T100’s advantages is that it is broadcast on Eurosport/Discovery+ in addition to being streamed on YouTube, TriathlonLive, PTO+ or what have you, because it allows it to reach audiences who would not have actively looked for a triathlon race to watch.
WTCS Hamburg is broadcast live on television by Germany’s public broadcaster, by the way. It would be really interesting to know how many people watch it there compared to TriathlonLive’s subscriber count. It’s just a gut feeling of course, but I would be surprised if revenue from TriathlonLive is big enough that it makes up for the loss of publicity.
Of course, no casual fans are tuning in when you have to go to a proprietary streaming platform. It means nobody will ever stumble across an ongoing broadcast while zapping through the channels and get hooked on it. It’s like hiding your store in the most obscure back alley instead of putting it on main street where everybody will walk by it sooner or later.
You need customers to generate revenue. Making your product unnecessarily hard to access makes it hard to get new customers.
I thought pto has been streaming on YT for free and or their own login platform that was also free? I’ve yet to pay for a pto race in what 3 or 4 years now?
People aren’t tuning in cus they can’t find thr broadcast. People aren’t tuning in cus the masses don’t give a shit about 4hr + tri events.
Hamburg also famously gets what ~1mi beer drinking fanatics on site as well. That venue is a unicorn as the next Wtcs wont get 10% the attendance and I’m guessing Hamburg is only event in live free German tv?
I can hear Sam R this fall on the PTN pod explaining when live is $80 next year under the “unification”…..”the t100 races will be free your just paying for Wtcs*” lol ooops I mean T50*
I’ve taken the liberty of including the full paragraph with my ‘comment’.
I thought the text was misleading by suggesting one could "watch the Gold Coast T100 on 21 March and follow this year’s WTCS [starting] with WTCS Samarkand on 25 April.
I won’t “forget to” but I have a sub to triathlon.live. This will be about £1 a race. But everyone will be able enjoy every T100 free-to-view, on whatever date they end up, and prompt/reminder messages for every T100. I wonder whether the ‘postponement’ of WTCS Abu Dhabi had any bearing on this broadcast amalgamation and ‘free SC March’?
Also, for 2026, all WTCS races will be commented by Will McCloy and Belinda Granger. Trevor, Helen, etc (the historical crew of the last few years) will cover the World Cup races.
