Athletics opens this weekend with a new competition that aims to become one of the major events on the international calendar. The World Athletics Ultimate Championship, which will bring together in Budapest Olympic and World champions, Diamond League winners and some of the planet’s best athletes, will not be televised in Spain.
Neither RTVE nor Eurosport will broadcast the three days of competition. The only option to follow the events live from Spain will be through World Athletics, which offers free live streaming of the event but with mandatory registration.
The decision represents a significant handicap for the dissemination of the championship in our country. Television still has a much greater reach than a specific platform, especially among audiences who do not regularly follow athletics and who could discover its big stars thanks to an open broadcast or integrated into a widely accessible sports platform.
The championship will be held from September 11 to 13 in Budapest, with three night sessions and a format that will bring together many of the sport’s biggest global names. It will comprise 28 disciplines and a spectacular prize pool of $10 million, the largest ever in the history of athletics, with $150,000 for each individual champion.
Five opportunities for Spain
The event will also have a Spanish presence. Marta García, Jaël Bestué, Quique Llopis and Mohamed Attaoui will compete in Budapest, while Spain will also be represented in the mixed 4×100 relay.
The absence of a television broadcast is even more significant considering that this is the first edition of a championship World Athletics aims to solidify as one of the sport’s major international events.
INTERVIEWS AND PANEL DISCUSSIONS WITH CORREDOR MAGAZINE
The Corredor Magazine will be in Budapest. Three journalists will travel to the Hungarian capital to cover the championship from the stadium, conducting interviews with the protagonists in the mixed zone and hosting a roundtable at the end of each of the three competition days.