[ad_1]
The winter studio’s cross-country World Cup broadcasts are a regular feature on the weekends of many households. The competitions, which are still shown on SVT before Nent takes over the rights to next season, often draw a million Swedish viewers.
But there is no more variation in terms of age.
– Television is for older audiences. These are young children and adults. Then there’s a pretty big gap, says Ulrika Sterner, who has a background in the television industry at Eurosport.
MMS media measurement service statistics shows that a clear majority of viewers who have sat down to follow the progress of Frida Karlsson, Ebba Andersson, Linn Svahn and other long distance stars at the World Cup are made up of the older generation.
In the World Cup competitions in which Sweden participated during the season, that is, in Ruka, Lahti, Falun and Ulricehamn, 64 percent of the total number of spectators were 60 years or older and 24 percent were in the age group 40 to 59 years. In other words, 88 percent, just under nine out of ten viewers, are made up of more than 40 people.
The measure certainly applies only linear TV, but the statistics are revealing even if the streaming service SVT play was included, says Karina Malmsten, who works with public relations and marketing at MMS.
– You can probably get things from what kind of sport it is. If you take JVM in hockey as an example, it can attract, even linearly, viewers a little younger than cross-country skiing.
The share of viewers who were over 60 was 48 percent when Sweden beat the Czech Republic 7-1 at the premiere of JVM on the second day of Christmas. Here too the overweight for the older target group, but not as big of a difference as in the cross-country skiing World Cup.
To take another For example, the handball World Cup final, which was broadcast on TV6 at the end of January, most of the viewers were also 60 years or older, but with a clearly more even distribution. 39 percent were in the oldest age group, while 30 percent were viewers between the ages of 3 and 39.
– The youngest are also available on linear TV but not to the same extent. They look at streaming and playback services. A lot of Youtube, says Karina Malmsten.
In Norway, VG has made a similar compilation showing that eight out of ten Norwegian viewers are 50 years or older. “Virtually no one under the age of 19 watches cross-country skis on television,” the newspaper writes in the article where the former president of the main Norwegian sports center Olympiatoppen, Bjørge Stensbøl, sadly exclaims:
– I thought the numbers were weak, but not so dramatically bad. It’s sad.
For the Swedish part see Ulrika Sterner is not concerned with having the older generation as her obviously largest target group.
– No, it is not worrisome or troublesome at this time. It has looked the same over a long period of time for many years, she says.
– I’ve looked at how it looks in other sports like hockey, soccer, track and field, and biathlon. They are the most popular sports and most are also over 40 years old, as is the general viewer.
The Swedish Ski Federation has not established a way of working for the younger generation to follow the skiers of the national team more closely. On the other hand, “Strategy 2026” was recently launched, which aims to make cross-country skiing a more modern sport and attract more practitioners.
– This is always a problem that you struggle with as a sports association. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being strongly entrenched in the 40-50 target group. It’s the strongest buying target group, so commercially it’s great to be strong there. But you want younger skills that fill up.
– We work very hard to profile our cyclists on social media to achieve a relationship with a younger audience, on a platform where they exist, says Ulrika Sterner.
She believes that future cross-country broadcasts will be phased out from the traditional TV channel and taken over by other digital platforms and services.
Is YouTube the one that applies to attract young viewers?
– Yes, or maybe Tiktok. If you want to make it more difficult, it is on Snapchat and Tiktok where you make your way. It’s about being and being relevant where young people are, says Ulrika Sterner.
– You have to find ways to be relevant to the target group and I don’t think linear TV is the way you are relevant. On the other hand, we want everyone over 50 to keep looking at us.
