Live from Budapest: Director of broadcast at World Athletics James Lord talks improving value for fans and rights holders By Heather McLean Thursday, August 31, 2023 - 14:18
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The World Athletic Championship 2023 was held from 19 to 27 August in Budapest
James Lord, director of broadcast at World Athletics, has been at World Athletics for six years, coming to the association from the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB). He says he joined what was the IAAF and is now World Athletics because he wants to help grow it.
Speaking to SVG Europe in Budapest at the World Athletic Championships 2023, he explains: My role is fundamentally split in half. The one half is media rights, so how we sell and manage all of our media rights around the world for all the World Athletic Series, with seven events held over a two year cycle. And then production as well and the relationship with ITN through our joint venture with ITN [World Athletics Productions]. That was one of the principal reasons I decided to join, because I wanted to spend more time on international distribution but also content production as well. So it's an incredibly broad remit.
The joint venture of World Athletic Productions was agreed initially in 2017 and came to life in 2018, with the first event under the brand in 2019 with the World Cross Country Championships in Aarhus, Denmark. That was swiftly followed by Doha for the World Championships.
James Lord, director of broadcast at World Athletics
Taking control
On World Athletic Productions, Lord says: That was one of the main reasons I joined, genuinely. I think historically what was happening before the partnership was put in place was the responsibility for host broadcasting was very much left with the organising committee. So that was true in London '17 and all events prior to that. I think [the LOC] inevitably have a slightly different perspective on production and content than maybe we at World Athletics do.
For us it's about improving the quality of the product and consistency from event to event to event, and delivering more value, whereas with an organising committee, of course events can often be very expensive to host, and sometimes it can be more of a race to the bottom line and do it as cheaply as possible. So the decision to take control and effectively bring production inhouse was for me a really smart move. When I first heard about it, it was a big draw for me to leave England Cricket, which was a big passion of mine, to come to athletics.
It's making sure that live experience is great, and it's changing and improving and it's an entertaining product to watch, and that people understand the sport and demystifying the sport as well. But then giving people more opportunities to watch in different ways as well. I think we've got that balance really, really, really good here
Through World Athletic Productions the association has been able to sit down and really question what it wants and how it wants that to be presented on screen, Lord says. [The joint venture it] has allowed us to really spend time to look at the product and say, how do we improve it? . So I bracket my role into two simple areas, which is improving the quality of the output with the team here, and then getting more people to watch. If you boil it right down to the very basics, that's what it's all about.
Yet he adds the goal of bringing more people to athletics is not an overnight fix. It takes time. Athletics is a complicated sport. The World Championships is a big, big event. And particularly the people who don't know the sport, it's a lot to get your head around. So we think we've gone on a really long journey. You improve event to event, and you're learning, they're all different; the World Champs in Doha in '19 was radically different to Oregon, and then Oregon was radically different to here. And I'm sure it'll be very different in Tokyo in '25 as well.
But for us it's really about making sure we're just improving the product from top to bottom, whether that's how the camera narratives are put together, graphics, and really the whole storytelling, Lord continues. And actually not just telling the story of the competition; it's about [the athletes'] journey when they get off the bus and the journey into the call room, and the drama and the moments before they run out onto the track of course telling the great stories that unfold on the track and the field but also then what happens afterwards as well.
The results so far are promising, Lord comments: We're seeing there's just so much more demand for that content, and the more we do it, the more our rightsholders say, we want more of it . It's funny that this is the first World Championships where they don't just ask for more, but they're expecting all that behind the scenes content; the cameras in the call room, cameras on the buggies coming over, that kind of ancillary additional content they're craving. And it goes down really, really well.
He adds: It's just a real obsession of ours to just improve the product, and taking production inhouse has allowed us to do that and not be focused solely on the cost. Because it's a balance; it's an expensive production, but you have to find the balance between cost and quality as well. I think we're making huge strides in that area as well.
Race walkers in the 35km competition sweat profusely in the morning sunshine in Hero's Square, Budapest, at the World Athletic Championships 2023
Delivering value
As well as making sure that fans around the world see a continually enhanced product on screen, much of Lord's focus is on delivering value to the World Athletics' rightsholders. He explains: So fundamentally w
