52 XTREME Ineos
hen Eliud Kipchoge dismissed his pacemakers at the 500-metre final stretch, not even the toughest cynics
could prevent their mouths from turning upwards. It was a moment that defined ‘history in the making’, a display of athletic immortality: the marathon distance had been completed in under two hours. Kipchoge galloped around a Vienna park four times before beating his personal best in the Ineos 1:59 Challenge. The Kenyan had gotten close in a similar attempt at the Monza Formula One racetrack near Milan in 2017, running the marathon in two hours and 25 seconds – an impressive time still, but perhaps not quite as catchy. It was also not only Kipchoge who achieved a world first that day. The host broadcaster, Sunset+Vine, felt a duty to position the athlete’s milestone alongside the landing on the moon, running the four- minute mile and sailing around the world in 80 days, and this required a lot more than just a straight host coverage plan to deliver a memorable moment. It required something executive director, Andrew Preece, calls a “360 host broadcast.”
TRAINING The first part of creating this more rounded broadcast was deciding to do live coverage. Preece says: “That was the easy part; the hard part was working out the best way to get the maximum number of eyeballs on it, because we were allocated an eight-day window in which the event might happen. I was concerned broadcasters wouldn’t be
able to clear their schedules for eight days, not knowing when it might happen.” Preece anticipated the event wouldn’t air on TV and decided to pursue digital channels for distribution. Nonetheless, Sunset+Vine did end up with deals with 59 live broadcasters, including the BBC, NBC and Eurosport. Preece says: “After this, we were hard-pressed by Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to sign exclusive deals. We did, in the end, sign a deal with YouTube, so it wasn’t live on any other digital channel.” At the same time, Preece’s news and digital departments were tasked with creating another slice of this broadcast pie by generating an appetite for the event. He explains: “Working closely with Ineos and its marketing team, our digital department devised a social strategy based around Kipchoge’s catchphrase, ‘no human is limited.’ It became our hashtag for the event, and in the month leading up to it, we filmed and published videos with Chris Froome, Patrick Vieira and other iconic ambassadors to build social awareness with that hashtag. Our news department produced and distributed 1200 language- localised stories to the news networks of the world. For instance, we covered the pacemakers, who had come from a wide
LET’S GO OUTSIDE Coverage of the challenge was handled from an OB van providing five different programmes to suit different viewing audiences
OUR DIGITAL DEPARTMENT DEVISED ASOCIALSTRATEGYBASED AROUND KIPCHOGE’S CATCHPHRASE ‘NO HUMAN IS LIMITED’
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