Despite the big American plans of FIS boss Eliasch: ski racing is a total flop on American TV

Oberhofen, summer 2022: There is a heated discussion on the FIS board about the World Cup calendar. For President Johan Eliasch (62), it is abundantly clear that the speed races in November and December in Lake Louise and Beaver Creek are not enough to promote the alpine market in the US and Canada. The Swedish-raised billionaire therefore proposes a second North American tour in February/March.

Austrian ski general Peter Schröcksnadel, like most other council representatives, was initially against this idea. But then Eliasch makes a promise that gets all the skeptics on his side. “Johan assured us that all American races will be broadcast live by TV giant NBC. Seeing an opportunity to present our beautiful alpine sport to an audience of millions in the US, I ultimately agreed to join Eliasch.

Pathetic TV ratings

The 82-year-old Tyrolean now regrets this decision as much as the vote he gave Eliasch in the election for FIS president in 2021. Why? Instead of millions of viewers, the broadcasts of the races in Palisades Tahoe and Aspen were a total flop. Last year, the Palisades slalom reached just 20,000 television and online streaming consumers in the U.S., a country of 332 million people. Ratings for the speed races in Aspen were only slightly higher, with 40,000 watching the downhill in the country where the last Super Bowl drew 123 million viewers, and 30,000 in the Super-G.

By comparison, 390,000 ski enthusiasts watched the Aspen run on SRF, and 570,000 on ORF. This enormous disproportionality also has to do with the fact that these matches will ultimately not be shown live on NBC, as the president promised, but on the special channel CNBC or the NBC streaming service Peacock. But Peter Schröcksnadel was also very angry about something else: “In Palisades and Aspen, not only the viewing figures on American TV, but also the quality of the broadcasts were very poor. The direction, camera work and images were so poor that alleged winner AJ Ginnis was not clearly visible on television during the slalom in Palisades.”

Another try

This weekend two more World Cup races are scheduled not far from Lake Tahoe (California). On Saturday our superstar Marco Odermatt (26) is aiming for his tenth giant slalom victory in a row, on Sunday Daniel Yule wants to make up points on leader Manuel Feller in the battle for the small slalom ball.

Because the races in the host country can only be seen on the special channel CNBC or in the livestream, it is feared that very few Americans will witness this spectacle.