The 22nd European Athletics Championships in Zurich has crossed the milestone of 1,000 hours of expected live television coverage, with 35 international broadcasters from across Europe expressing intentions to televise the biggest athletics event of the year.
According to the current broadcast intentions provided by the European Broadcasting Union for the 12-17 August championships, there will be at least 1,180 hours of television coverage over the six days of the championships, including more than 1,113 hours of live coverage.
Pan-European channel Eurosport plans to show the majority of the championships live across its 59 territories. Outside Europe, the event will be broadcast by Eurosport Asia.
European Athletics President Hansjörg Wirz said, “To have more than 1,000 hours of intended live coverage of the Zurich 2014 European Athletics Championships shows that the sport of athletics remains an attractive product for television audiences in Europe.
“We are very pleased that in cooperation with the EBU we are able to showcase the best of European Athletics with them providing the biggest platform to promote our sport on public free-to-air TV channels throughout the continent.”
The total number of hours of intended coverage will increase once the broadcast intentions of the remaining rights-holders are received.
The entire event will also be streamed live with English-language commentary at www.european-athletics.org, with nine additional feeds available at http://eurovision.digotel.com/ea/index.html. This service will not be available in France and Germany. The live streaming platform is produced in partnership with European Athletics International Partner SPAR and EBU-Eurovision.
The European Athletics Championships is the biggest event in the European Athletics’ competition programme. A total of 1,439 athletes from all 50 Member Federation countries are entered for this year's event in Zurich.