The first winter athletes have already started the season, but for the fans the TV holidays don’t begin until next weekend.
Millions of people watch the hour-long live broadcasts and consistently ensure top ratings that only very few other sports achieve.
How much winter sports are on TV?
Public television once again has around 400 hours of live reporting in its program. ARD and ZDF alternate on the weekends, the first starts this year. “Winter sports are ARD’s largest sports offering,” said sports coordinator Axel Balkausky. The specialist channel Eurosport has even more winter sports in its program than the first and second.
When is the winter sports program on TV?
Saturdays and Sundays are the main broadcast days for the major broadcasters. “On Fridays there are also up to four streams on the Internet,” explains Balkausky. They run on “sportschau.de”, “zdf.de/sport” and in the media libraries. During the week, there are usually only biathlon broadcasts on classic television, for example next week on ZDF.
The first starts this Saturday at 10 a.m. with the Cross-Country Skiing World Cup in Kuusamo. Afterwards there is a typically colorful mix of slopestyle, Nordic combination, biathlon and ski jumping. The winter fun lasts around eight hours before the “Sportschau” shows football.
What is Eurosport showing?
If you don’t like the public broadcasters’ offerings or find them too small, you can switch to Eurosport or the paid streaming service discovery+, which also belongs to the Warner Bros. Discovery media group. The program covers 1,100 hours on the various platforms. According to the company, almost 600 winter sports events will be shown. There are also – like ARD and ZDF – live broadcasts on “eurosport.de”.
What are the viewer numbers?
The ratings counters at ARD and ZDF rub their hands in winter. The broadcasts guarantee ratings over many hours. The long broadcasts on the weekends attracted an average of around 2.2 million people to the television in the previous season, and often twice as many for the particularly popular sports. According to the broadcasters, the average market share of the approximately 400 hours was 18.3 percent, well above the usual values.
Which disciplines are particularly popular?
The clear number one among TV viewers is biathlon. Consequently, a biathlon broadcast was the most successful TV broadcast of the winter sports season from mid-November 2022 to the first weekend in April 2023. The men’s 4×7.5 kilometer relay on January 22nd from Antholz was seen by 5.147 million people on ZDF and According to the broadcaster, they accounted for a market share of 31.7 percent.
There are nine biathlon races in the top ten most viewed live broadcasts. Only ski jumping can keep up: the New Year’s competition of the Four Hills Tournament took fourth place on ARD with 4.658 million people. Here, the range has recently fallen against the winter sports trend.
Which moderators and experts are in use?
ARD, ZDF and Eurosport are once again relying on prominent expertise on ice and snow this season. The first has Arnd Peiffer (biathlon) and Erik Lesser (biathlon), Sven Hannawald (ski jumping) and Felix Neureuther (alpine skiing) at the start. Julia Scharf, Stephanie Müller-Spirra and Claus Lufen take turns moderating in the studio. Lea Wagner is in ski jumping, Michael Antwerpes is in biathlon, Julia Scharf and Markus Othmer are in the alpine ski races.
At ZDF, Marco Büchel (alpine skiing), Sven Fischer (biathlon) and Laura Dahlmeier (biathlon) are still part of the team of experts. The new addition is Severin Freund for ski jumping. New presenters are Amelie Stiefvatter (alpine skiing) and Lena Kesting (ski jumping). Otherwise, ZDF is relying on the strengths of previous years such as the studio presenters Rudi Cerne and Katrin Müller-Hohenstein.
Eurosport has most of the experts on the microphone. The channel features, among others, Martin Schmitt and Werner Schuster (both ski jumping), Michael Rösch (biathlon), Vicky Rebensburg (alpine skiing), Fritz Dopfer (alpine skiing), the former junior world champion Martina Lechner (alpine skiing), Jochen Behle ( Cross-country skiing) and Hans-Peter Pohl (Nordic combined).