World Athletics announces host broadcasting partner tender for the World Athletics Series from 2025 to 2029

Trackside at the World Athletics in Oregon 2022 with World Athletics Productions, a JV between World Athletics and ITN

World Athletics has launched a process to appoint its host broadcasting partner for the World Athletics Series events for five years, from 2025 to 2029.

This period will include three editions of its marquee World Athletics Championships, an event which regularly draws a viewing audience of one billion people around the globe.

The partnership will be effective from 1 January 2025 and will include, most notably, the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo in the first year, as the federation celebrates the return of world-class athletics to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic stadium; this time with the full crowd that was not possible during the Olympic Games due to the pandemic.

The first phase of the search process being launched today is a Request for Information (RFI) to identify media companies who have the capability, advanced technology, personnel and experience required, and the appetite for innovation to deliver a world class production to the satisfaction of a global slate of rights holding broadcasters.

This will be followed by a Request for Proposal phase, and a decision phase, with the successful candidate to be appointed before the end of this year.

World Athletics CEO, Jon Ridgeon, said: “We launched our current partnership with ITN in 2017 and they have been a great partner, helping to elevate the quality of our host broadcast production and delivering more value to our rights holding broadcasters, and we want to thank them for their excellent work so far. As we look to step up our efforts in this area, now feels like the right time to review the future and we look forward to receiving some exciting proposals for how to continue to grow our sport.

“Broadcast is a fast-moving industry and has advanced substantially in the last five years. It is in the best commercial interests of our sport to understand the market again and make sure that we have the ideal production partner to take us forward to the end of the decade. Innovation is what we are striving for, and we are looking for a partner who has that same vision and can provide ground-breaking coverage of our major championships.”

Potential partners can acknowledge their interest by emailing a response to [email protected] by 20 March 2023.