Munich (pps) 170 hours world-wide, TV transmission times almost doubled compared to last year, record TV ratings for Olympic broadcasts: These are the TV headlines of the International Luge Federation, FIL, for the 2005-06 season. “TV presentation has clearly improved and does not stand behind other winter sports”, FIL President Josef Fendt stated.

The broadcasts from the Viessmann World Cup series, the Suzuki Challenge Cup and the European Championships totalled more than 170 hours world-wide and almost doubled compared to last season. Besides an increase in Germany, this has been achieved first of all by extensive international transmission.

Luge was increasingly shown in Italy and Austria: Sport Italia showed summaries of altogether more than 13 hours, RAI reported several times in the main news programmes, and ORF broadcasted extensive reports from the World Cup events in Torino and Innsbruck-Igls. Latvian TV reported six hours from the World Cup at Sigulda. Like last year, luge was shown in the USA on NBC and Speed Channel, CBC again broadcasted a summary of the Calgary World Cup event. But Russian TV had the major share in international TV transmissions with more than 60 hours: for the first time all events were broadcast – some even live.

As in the previous years, luge was regularly represented from every event on Eurosport – live (Sigulda, Torino, Koenigssee) and delayed as well as in 30-minute summaries. In addition all events were shown on the digital programme of Eurosport 2, mostly live. Eurosport Asia/Pacific, inaugurated on January 10, 2006 for Asia (except Japan and China) and Oceania, broadcast luge events extensively.

The number of TV viewers recorded between October 2005 and February 2006 amounted to more than 330 millions world-wide. But as the TV ratings of international transmissions could not be recorded completely, this number may in fact be much higher.

At the luge broadcasts within the sports shows of German Television, the viewing numbers clearly surpassed two million several times. The men’s decision at the European Championships in Winterberg, Germany, achieved the top position on ARD with 3.79 million TV viewers. Market-shares of more than 25 percent were occasionally reached.

Eurosport also recorded good ratings with luge transmissions. The top rating was achieved with 1.9 million TV viewers for the men’s event at the Viessmann World Cup at Altenberg, Germany.

The broadcasts from the Olympic luge competitions generated records: The men’s single decision was watched by 5.5 million on RAI and 8.27 million on ARD. The women’s final was followed by 7.39 million viewers on ZDF. During the Olympic Winter Games the luge events achieved market-shares of 30 percent several times in Germany.