Volvo Ocean Race Gets High Media Interest

According to recent media statistics, the current season of the Volvo Ocean Race has registered a huge increase in public interest over the past season. The famous yacht race around the world held every three years, has gained plenty of media coverages over the years, through a multi-channel communication approach that includes the official website, broadband TV, a mobile portal in partnership with Ericsson, an online game and use of social media such as Facebook and Twitter.

"As the media world evolves into a more online community, we have had great success with our online properties and new media areas. Our official website had over 89 million visitors with over one million fans visiting more than 100 times and the Official Game was a run-away success with over 221,768 players from over 180 countries," said Volvo Ocean Race CEO, Knut Frostad, in a statement for the press.

The cumulative broadcast audience was 1.3 billion this season.  Over 3,300 hours of coverage was generated through 11,000 broadcasts in 46 different territories on 217 channels globally.

This resulted in a television media value for Volvo alone of $107 million. The combination of TV and print gave Volvo a media value of $116.5 million, an increase of 34.6 percent, and a syndicate media value of $279.4 million, an increase of 52 percent.

Programming reached Western, Central and Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East, Central Asia, the Far East and the Pacific Rim in countries as diverse as Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Iran, Iraq, Latvia, Slovakia and South Korea.

"We are very happy with the numbers we have generated in the 2008-09 edition of the race. Not only have we surpassed the previous race in media reach, but we have increased our value in new territories such as India and China," Frostad added.