Yeah, yeah, this is a bit of a troll, but in light of seeing every toughman, semi-important boxing match and Playmate tacke football event being broadcast on PPV, would anyone here pony up $20 to see DeBoom and Badmann defend their titles?
Along the same lines, would you pay for start-to-finish access of each stage of the Tour de France?
We already get live coverate of the Tour =D
It’s like the only good thing Eurosport broadcasts all year long (except for the Olympics when they come, and the Giro and other bike races).
anyone see that 6’10 fella hand Hewitt his ass on a plate, almost ridiculous…
I would pay 20 dollars more becuase I would be able to see more of the race and less becuase I would be able to see it live. I think that the enjoyment of watching sports is not knowing who is going to win… it takes that part out of it when you watch the NBC broadcast 6 months later…
Yes and Yes. Where do I sign up?
I’d throw down the cash. Hell, I’d probably spend more than $20 for the coverage.
Absolutely not! This is a particaptory sort, not a spectator sport. It is meant to be done not watched. Eight and a half hours in front of the TV. Maybe if I could drag an Endless Pool, a bicycle trainer, and treadmill into the den, No not even then. It’s finally nice out, just go out and ride!
ABSOLUTELY! Where do I sign up?
Absolutely not! This is a particaptory sort, not a spectator sport. It is meant to be done not watched. Eight and a half hours in front of the TV. Maybe if I could drag an Endless Pool, a bicycle trainer, and treadmill into the den, No not even then. It’s finally nice out, just go out and ride!
Ever hear of video recorders? Choose your format: “ancient” VHS/Beta, recordable DVD, stream to hard drive, whatever. Then watch from your Endless Pool during the offseason.
I’d pay for coverage if it were available worldwide.
Absolutly - I’d even pay more than 20USD (I live in Australia). We get 30minutes of tour coverage every day (on free TV), we get about three other cycle races each year - much later though. Dont think pay TV offers any more than this (SBS TV is Aust show a fair bit of cycling on TV)
As for tri on free TV we get the accenture series and IM Australia - which is probably good (but no Hawaii). Pay TV adds most IM’s and Hawaii.
Damn Right I’d pay. Can you imagine the extra cash WTC could pump back into the race… with PPV revenues, prize purse increases across the board woul bring more and more athletes into the game and increase the sports visability and hopefully its popularity.
$20 is cheap…
I hope WTC is monitoring Slowtwitch. They already have $160 pledged for PPV.
By the way, how many have spectated a triathlon - boring!!
Bob Sigerson
No, When interested I spend IM days at the office and read the IMlive updates. IMNZ was better then a good book as Larsen charged the bike course then faded on the run. I might kick a few bucks only to support the cause.
I would pay for tape / DVD full coverage for use on the long winter rides (rollers).
TDF last year I read the updates on ACTIVE.com in between meetings and felt I was up to date.
Cheers, cm
You can get it for free on ironmanlive.com. I watched the finish of Ironman CDA yesterday. There was only one fixed camera / angle on the finish line. They had audio of the finish line annoucer and Nicole Deboom was doing interviews with some of the top finishers. I even watched some of the folks come in at the 16 and 17 hour mark. I thought this was great. You could switch back to the ironmanlive web page to see up-to-the-second results (I wish they would do more splits for the bike and run). I wish they would add a couple more cameras to the finish. I saw a few of my friends finish the race, even though I wasn’t there. Its awesome.
I wouldn’t pay $20 for live coverage of what we currently see on television. For $20, I would expect at least 5 motorcycles with live camera feeds and at least one helicopter following the entire race.
As recently as 1998 this was available for free on the local Kona cable channel. They intercepted the NBC feeds and had Mike Pigg and Paul Huddle “host” the show from Kona Amigos. We’d set the VCR up in the morning and have someone change the tape at lunch. 10 hours of live coverage with a few dead spots while the boys refilled their beers or no audio while watching Jurgen chew up the miles off the front. If they weren’t careful with swithing to a different feed you would see all that goes on in the front pack of an ironman race. It was a real learing experience to watch the eating, drinking, peeing, drafting, etc that went on. Pigg and Huddle also provided insightful commentary.
And yes, we would then sit down and watch 8 hours of TV the following weekend. That’s little more than your average joe six-pac NASCAR/NFL guy catches EVERY weekend.
Bring back the free cable!!!