IRONMAN Group Goes Virtual; Facebook Watch at Center of Strategy By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Wednesday, March 25, 2020 - 3:23 pm
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
For Matthieu Van Veen, The IRONMAN Group, chief revenue officer, and his team the challenge was simple: how can they use social media platforms to give IRONMAN triathlon fans a chance to get closer than ever to the sport they love. As a mass-participation sport IRONMAN found its core fans and athletes were underserved by the traditional media market where live coverage of a 10-hour event was simply not an option.
Enter Facebook Watch and its ability to give IRONMAN a platform that engages its community in a whole new way and also provides a great outlet for coverage of complete IRONMAN events.
Matthieu Van Veen of the IRONMAN Group says Facebook Watch allows triathletes and fans to consume more content than ever.
We have 280,000 competitors and a big community that was starved for content, says Van Veen. That helped lead us to the initial conversation with Facebook as it is a platform that brings people together.
But now, with the world in a health crisis, IRONMAN has needed to postpone and even cancel some of its upcoming events and the team at IRONMAN has decided to go virtual, with a virtual racing series set to debut on Facebook Watch on April 4.
(l-to-r) Matthieu Van Veen of IRONMAN Group, Devi Mahadevia of Facebook, and Ken Kerschbaumer of SVG discussed how IRONMAN Group makes the most of Facebook Watch at Sportel Americas.
We believe that under extraordinary circumstances such as these, athletes should be able to maintain the structure and continuity that training and competition provides, says Andrew Messick, President & CEO for The IRONMAN Group. The IRONMAN Virtual Club is an innovative digital platform that enables our athletes to continue training with purpose, remain connected to our community and provides an opportunity to compete through the IRONMAN VR Series.
Athletes will compete in traditional age-group categories and for select virtual races. They will also have the opportunity to earn qualifying slots to the 2020 IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship, set to be held in Taupo, New Zealand, in November of this year.
The format and distances may vary each race weekend. The IRONMAN Virtual Club platform will utilize connected devices and be compatible with most wearable technology and app trackers.
Devi Mahadevia of Facebook says the IRONMAN community is a natural fit for Facebook Watch.
Devi Mahadevia, Facebook, director of emerging and digital sports partnerships, says that there are more than 40,000 fitness-related groups on Facebook and that the communities on Facebook are built by the athletes.
When you marry those groups with the right content the magic happens, she says. When the groups share content, they become the marketing channel and drive where the content goes.
The IRONMAN season consists of full-distance triathlon events and the IRONMAN production team uses seven cameras (four on motorbikes, two located at the transition areas, and then a drone) and a bonded-cellular backpack to send the signals back to Boulder, CO, where the announcers are located.
What interested us in Facebook as the ability to be non-traditional and engage people when they are watching the content, says Van Veen. With a 10-hour window how do you keep people watching? And how could we make things like polls or the ability to ask a question seamless to the user?
While the races are going on the IRONMAN team gets to see viewers from around the globe join as they wake up. The good morning from the U.S.! or Good morning from Japan! messages hit the chat board and the engagement climbs. More than a million people watch over an hour of IRONMAN content in one sitting a year, so the engagement is there. And then the questions start coming into the announce team.
They ask questions that really matter about things like nutrition strategy and our announcers can react to the questions which means greater engagement, says Van Veen.
Adds Mahadevia: The question tool brings viewers into the broadcast and they get more involved. IRONMAN has gotten 5,000 responses from the audience using these tools.
The platform also lets IRONMAN know more about what the viewers are doing while they are watching the races. Triathletes not competing in the competition on Facebook Watch will tune in during their own marathon or triathlon training sessions and even the sponsors can get involved during the broadcasts.
Our sponsors can be broadcasters as we give them the ability to put the content into their Facebook page so that people can watch it in other groups, says Van Veen. The more the better.
During the races the IRONMAN team also created edited clips for things like first out of the water and tagging partners on a minute-to-minute basis. And the athletes also respond to the chat trends. Heather Jackson, a U.S. triathlete, once held a banana in her hand while riding for miles and the chat feed lit up with viewers cracking jokes and wondering what was going on. The production crew responded by creating Banana split times and at the next race Jackson herself embraced it with complete banana racing kit and bike.
It shows the power of being relevant to this community, adds Van Veen.
In the past two years more than five million people have watched at least one minute of IRONMAN content on Facebook Watch. Much of that is due to the groups, where authentic social relationships are the glue, and also by sponsors and even the tourism boards for locations where the races are held.
The tourism boards can showcase their destinations and it is a meaningful platform to promote destination events, says Van Veen. They aren't just targeting eyeballs but our community which helps decide th
Most recent headlines
23/12/2025
How guilas Cibae as Dominican Winter League Games Are Locally Produced for Glob...
23/12/2025
BitFire's Jim Akimchuk on Supplying Scalability and Customization in the Clo...
23/12/2025
CAMB.AI Enables European Athletics to Offer Multi-Language SupportPlan is to eventually offer translation into all languages spoken in EuropeBy Ken Kerschbaumer...
23/12/2025
Analysis: As sports media values trend negative, scarcity and quality are king By Callum McCarthy, Editor-at-Large
Monday, December 22, 2025 - 14:08
Print ...
23/12/2025
ESPN, Disney, and NBA Return to the Animated Altcast Fray With Second Edition of...
23/12/2025
End the Year on a High Note and Donate to the Sports Broadcasting Fund Today! By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Tuesday, December 23, 2025 - 12:25 pm
...
23/12/2025
The year is winding down, the weather outside is frightful, and it's the perfect time to escape into a story that warms the heart. For listeners looking for...
23/12/2025
A Zeus motor is hot fire tested at L3Harris' Camden, Arkansas, solid rocket ...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Lightware will exhibit several major product innovations at ISE 2026, including the new USB-C BOOSTER-V1, Google Meet. integration for various Taurus UCX models...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Taking the Stage at Carnegie Hall-On a Global Scale Boston Conservatory Orchestra students reflect on their epic concert marking the 80th session of the UN Gene...
23/12/2025
Back to All News
How Steamy Can It Get? Single's Inferno' Season 5 Pre...
23/12/2025
Back to All News
33 Million Global Viewers on Netflix Watched Jake Paul vs. Ant...
23/12/2025
New technique lights up where drugs go in the body, cell by cell Scripps Research scientists developed a technique that maps drug binding in individual cells th...
22/12/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Presidio's Neerav Shah on the Role of Its Captiva...
22/12/2025
Hitting the bullseye: Sky Sports readies itself for the biggest PDC World Darts ...
22/12/2025
Unique skillset: Bringing new directors to the world of darts at The Worlds with...
22/12/2025
Gravity Media prepares for a flight of fancy with the PDC World Darts Championsh...
22/12/2025
One hundred and eighty: Gravity Media on hitting the production bullseye at the ...
22/12/2025
The Famous Group's Jon Slusser on Fascinating Fans Through Immersive Content...
22/12/2025
ESPN's Meg Aronowitz on Continuing High-Quality Broadcasts of Collegiate Spo...
22/12/2025
ESPN Takes Data-Driven Storytelling to New Heights with MNF Playbook with Next ...
22/12/2025
For a decade, popular German podcast Fest & Flauschig has hosted an annual Chris...
22/12/2025
Paramount Scores Largest Share Increase Among Distributors as Paramount and CBS...
22/12/2025
New multi-year deal integrates Roku's data to fuel Nielsen's measurement suite
Roku gains access to Nielsen's streaming ratings, showing The Roku C...
22/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
22/12/2025
Berklee Wrapped 2025: Our Top News and Stories A look back at a year highlighted by faculty milestones, major film and television projects, Bob Dylan's ho...
22/12/2025
The works of Plato state that when humans have an experience, some level of change occurs in their brain, which is powered by memory - specifically long-term me...
22/12/2025
Partnership integrates complementary satellite data and AI analytics to enhance security, infrastructure, and environmental monitoring solutions for global cust...
22/12/2025
Workflows allow you to create a sequence of planned events which may be added to your template(s) or inserted directly into your sequential or background playli...
22/12/2025
Monday 22 December 2025
Sky extends PGA TOUR partnership until 2029, as Sky Spo...
22/12/2025
Back to All News
Global Anime Hits and New Releases Take Center Stage at Jump Festa 2026
Entertainment
22 December 2025
GlobalJapan
Link copied to clipboar...
22/12/2025
Siobh n McSweeney, Rory McIlroy, Elon Musk, Catherine Connolly, Jim Gavin, Ivan Yates and Traitor Paudie Moloney lead new characters for Callan Kicks the Year 2...
22/12/2025
Winner announced in the picturesque surroundings of Wicklow's Avondale Tower and Treetop Walk
Andrew Trimble wins the show in his first series as coach
Th...
22/12/2025
The 2025 winners have been announced today, Sunday 21 December, for Ireland's largest choral competition Choirs for Christmas hosted by RT lyric fm.
Ove...
21/12/2025
Back to All News
Legoshi and Haru's Story Reaches Its Finale: BEASTARS Fin...
21/12/2025
John Shortt named Young Sportsperson of the Year Kerry are the Team of the Year
...
20/12/2025
Atomos announced the immediate availability of a new firmware update for its Ninja TX GO and Ninja TX monitor-recorders, unlocking ProRes RAW recording from the...
20/12/2025
CJP Broadcast has completed the digitisation of the European Gymnastics tape archive, converting 328 tapes containing more than forty years of recorded material...
20/12/2025
Bitmovin, the leading provider of video streaming solutions, today announced the launch of the Stream Lab MCP Server, to give AI agents and large language model...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
IRONMAN Group Goes Virtual; Facebook Watch at Center of Strategy By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director 
