Broadcast Sport spoke to marketing, communications and media director Antoine Aubour as the trail running competition renewed its DAZN deal
UTMB has revealed its broadcast plans for 2025, with four additional events to be broadcast by its four international partners, taking it to 12 in total.
DAZN (global), l’Equipe (France), Outside (North America), and iQiy (China) have all renewed their rights agreements for the trail running competition, with the action also available through its D2C platform Live.UTMB.World.The platform has been redesigned for 2025 to better suit mobile devices, with 80% of its users accessing it that way.
Depending on region, the broadcasts will be available in French, English, Spanish, Chinese, German, Italian and Thai, with innovative techniques such as drones, mountain bikers and runner-mounted cameras used to raise the production. Broadcast Sport visited the showpiece Mont Blanc event last year to see the in-house and Outdoor Sport Live-produced event, which you can read more about here.
Marketing, communications and media director Antoine Aubour told Broadcast Sport that the 2025 productions will include, “Data driven interactive maps, GPS tracking with runner data, some race segments and we will work with Strava again this year. We will also have performance analytics, real time leaderboards and immersive editorial content that is not just live streaming, but an enriched edition of live and editorial content focused on the venues. It can be a bit like watching the Tour de France. We have an expert commentary team, elite athletes and analysts as well as many guests that include the volunteers, local trail running experts and local personalities.”
The commentators will have live interaction with fans through a live chat, as well as additional camera angles and placements available through its D2C platform.
The 2025 season will begin with the Chianti Ultra Trail by UTMB, which will see the three last UTMB champions — Kilian Jornet, Jim Walmsley and Vincent Bouillard - competing in the 100M race.
Driving fans to Live.UTMB.World is a key part of Aubour’s growth plans, as well as securing domestic broadcast partners for individual local races. he revealed that UTMB is, “Working with a media agency to secure additional domestic broadcast partners in key territories for us. We want at least secure one domestic live partner per country. For Spain, for example, we want to secure one local domestic partner to broadcast Hoka Val d’Aran by UTMB and Tenerife Bluetrail by UTMB and possibly the finals. The same would apply for Italy with two events, Switzerland and the UK, where we are looking to find a partner.
“We are working to find six new domestic partners. Right now in the UK we have two events and so we are keen to find a domestic partner as the UK is a key strategic market for us.”
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