Dear Media Friends of Biathlon,
We have all witnessed another season of great biathlon and spectacular sporting achievements close at the BMW IBU World Cup Finals in Oslo - Holmenkollen, Norway, preceded by this season’s absolute highlight at the IBU World Championships in Oestersund, Sweden.
These triumphs of sport and their greatly transmitted images were no coincidences, of course, for the International Biathlon Union has made an enormous and well planned progress in the past twenty five years, transforming itself from a rather shy sport to a proud - and independent with that - sporting and commercial winter giant.
Biathlon has managed to evolve its competition formats into some of the most attractive and sought after products in the winter sports industry. With creating attractive competition formats, our athletes got the platforms to showcase their talent as a truly unique combination of endurance, speed, precision and fast changing and fast charging decision making. With competitions being relatively short and always unpredictable, full of dramatic twists and turns, biathlon turned out to also be very well suited for a modern, fast consuming media landscape. And as a consequence of all that, recognisable stars with global reach were created, helping biathlon attract and lock the interest of an ever growing fan base thus further fuelling commercial and media interest and success.
A great deal of biathlon’s success has happened thanks to our fruitful partnerships with you, the broadcasters. We have so far managed to always find common interest and common ground to be able to showcase biathlon at its best; and I firmly believe we can build on that good experience and continue to mutually evolve.
It is therefore of my great personal pleasure and professional satisfaction to be able to welcome you at the World Broadcasters Meeting just ten months away from the beginning of the IBU World Championships which will be held in spectacularly beautiful Antholz - Anterselva, Italy between 12 February 2020 and 23 February 2020.
