TOUR: How do you livestream cycling races?
BöckleThe Tour de France does this via satellite - we do the transmission with mobile phone cards, so to speak. This means that we have devices, small rucksacks, which are located with the respective cameraman. This rucksack transmits via mobile phone cards to our headquarters in Hall. There, each individual camera, i.e. helicopter camera, motorbike camera and in some cases also take-off camera, is sent individually to us at the transmission centre in Hall. We then send out the image from Hall. So the biggest problem is the network coverage, but Austria has one of the best network coverages in Europe. And there are always six mobile phone cards in these rucksacks. This means that we use different networks and the strongest network is always displayed automatically - this gives us a stable picture. It's very complex and only works because our technical manager has been working with this technology for almost 15 years.
TOUR: K19 also offers a live stream of amateur cycling races such as the Ötztaler Cycle Marathon or the Neusiedler See Cycle Marathon. How much effort goes into this?
BöckleWe had 14 people on duty at Lake Neusiedl. Six people in broadcasting technology, one editorial manager, two commentators, we had three camera motorbikes in use, three target cameras, two of them manned.
TOUR: That doesn't sound cheap - what does it cost?
BöckleIn the style we broadcast, it starts at 15,000 euros. An event like the Neusiedler See Cycle Marathon - you have to reckon with 15,000 to 20,000 euros. But we have built up a large network of partners over the years. One of our most important products is the programme Österreich dreht am Rad. There are around 50 partners involved and that means we also cross-finance stories, the organiser pays us and then advertising partners pay us a partner fee throughout the year.
TOUR: How many programmes are there on Österreich dreht am Rad?
BöckleAustria turns on the wheel: we have 40 live programmes. In total, we make around 220 TV programmes about cycling over the course of a year. And in addition to the 40 magazines or short programmes that we make, we have around 60 live broadcast days. And Lake Neusiedl is just one day. We reach around 1.7 million viewers per year on TV and digitally. For example, at the Lake Neusiedl Cycle Marathon, we have around 28,000 and 35,000 viewers. Just under 14,000 watched on TV, then we had around 6,000 viewers ourselves and another 6,000 on YouTube. 30,000 people watch us on average per broadcast. The outlier is the Ötztaler Cycle Marathon, where there are over 300,000 in total and the Tour of Austria, where we have between 50,000 and 60,000 per day. At the Ötztaler Cycle Marathon we have 14 hours of live coverage and at the peak there are around 13,000 watching at the same time.
TOUR: What are you planning for the Tour of Austria in terms of the livestream?
BöckleLast year, ORF reported with programmes that we made for them and ServusTV On took over live what we broadcast. This year, ORF Sport+ is covering all of our stages live and Eurosport.de and Discovery+ are also broadcasting live. In addition, we have the Tour of Austria Club on Eurosport linear television directly after the Tour de France Veloclub. This was possible because the Austrian advertising organisation contributed to the production costs. We broadcast half an hour live before the start, the first half hour and then, after a break, the last two hours of the stage.
Livestream Tour of Austria
TOUR: How much effort do you put into the Tour of Austria?
BöckleWe have helicopters in action at several stages, are in the field with four cameras and have a total of around twelve cameras in action during a stage. The whole thing is paid for and financed by advertising partners. The Tour of Austria is the main client and they in turn have various partners from the destinations plus normal partners. We have a total of just under 40 people working on each stage. The entire technology, the entire transmission is all provided by us. We are in charge of the control room, we have had a branch in Hall in Tirol for a year now, which is the media centre. We have all the broadcasting technology there. We work with our partners numotion.media and Gargamel Production on all productions. We are a well-rehearsed team.
TOUR: Do you also use drones for the livestream?
BöckleWe also work with live drones, but unlike the Ski World Cup, where they already use drones permanently, we always have to be careful whether we are flying in authorised areas or not. If you go to any city today, you can't use a racing drone. That's why drones can currently only be used in rural areas where there is no immediate danger to the population and you have to watch out for air traffic. You don't have such problems with a helicopter. The helicopter is given its flight space, this hour or an hour and a half. You have to be careful with the racing drone. We use it successfully at the Vorarlberg Grand Prix, for example, because it's very clear there. There's a big climb in the race and we cover it almost completely with a drone instead of a helicopter.
TOUR: How did the name come about? Wikipedia says K-19 was a Soviet nuclear submarine ...
BöckleWe only saw the Soviet nuclear submarine later. But the name came about quite simply from the name of the town of Koblach, where we are based. We gave ourselves the new name when we launched our new TV channel in 2019. Since then, we have been broadcast on television via Magenta, A1 and SimpliTV. So we really do deliver via TV and reach 1.4 million households at home on the couch.
TOUR: Linear television has already been prematurely buried - but is it still the most important thing in the sports sector?
BöckleAbsolutely: that is still the most important thing. For advertisers, television is simply still more important than broadcasting over the Internet.
TOUR: Does K19 have future plans for livestreaming?
Böckle: Germany is a great market. With the Sauser brothers, among other things, we make their Cycling marathon Rothaus Riderman - we broadcast it in Austria and the German Road Championships. That would be a goal in itself: greater coverage in the Alpine region. We could position ourselves very well in Switzerland, because they also organise races similar to ours. That's our next step.
Kristian Bauer
Editor
