Waterfront Marathon teams with YouTube for live stream

Race fans all over the world will have access to the live broadcast of this year’s Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon thanks to an innovative partnership between event organizers and Google. For the first time ever, access to the race will be available on the Canada Running Series YouTube channel. While MaRS Discovery District was the intermediary between marathon organizers and YouTube, it is Toronto-based Endless Potential Media Group that is responsible for the broadcast content and assembling a first-class commentary team.

“YouTube is a global platform and it provides more people an opportunity to access that content, around the world,” says Nathan Monk, senior strategist of the ICT Venture Services Group of of MaRS, who helped facilitate the arrangement. “If the race was just being broadcast on a national channel it could only reach so many people. Through this partnership, family and friends of those runners can now stream the race from anywhere in the world.”

Tim Hutchings, a two-time world cross-country silver medallist, has been contracted to provide colour commentary. With two decades of experience, Hutchings’ voice has been heard on NBC, CBC, BBC, Eurosport and dozens of other international television networks around the world. The Englishman will be joined by Michael Doyle, editor-in-chief of Canadian Running magazine and Krista DuChene, who ran her personal best marathon time of 2:28:32 at last year’s Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon, making her the second-fastest Canadian woman ever.

“This particular broadcast will be especially significant because it will be in HD,” says Race Director Alan Brookes. “Marathons can now be in control of our own destiny and work to build our audiences through our own channels and social media. No longer do we hope that a broadcast TV network will cover the race, but then show it at 2 a.m. on a Wednesday. Or that we’ll have to watch some illegal internet feed with commentary in a foreign language. We feel this could open up a whole new world of world class marathons to a large and very interested audience.”

“We have upped the coverage with more cameras on the course than last year. There will be nine broadcast cameras, six of them mounted on motorcycles (along with eight Dejero transmitters),” Matt Hortobagyi, EPMG’s executive producer, reveals. “What that is going to do is give us compete coverage of the elite Canadian men and women, as well as the elite internationals. It’s going to be better and more accommodating for the commentators.”

To watch the Race Day broadcast, fans can simply go to the Waterfront Marathon homepage where the YouTube live stream will be embedded. The homepage will also have important links to the event’s social hub which brings all social media posts together from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Edited from a press release by Paul Gains.