TVJ ready to ring in Champs fan return

WITH A return of fans to look forward to and a longer promotional period, Television Jamaica General Manager Claire Grant says that she expects the same high standards in bringing the ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys and Girls’ Athletics Championships (Champs) to a global audience.

The biggest high school track and field championships, which will take place from April 5-9, will be broadcast by TVJ via its 1spotmedia platform ( https://www.1spotmedia.com/), once again offering special pay-per-view packages with the opportunity of reserving places to watch the nation’s young athletes compete.

After the 2020 edition was cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Champs returned last year albeit with no fans in attendance. Jamaica College and Edwin Allen High School won the boys’ and girls’ titles, respectively.

While not giving specifics on the viewership last year, Grant said she expects continued growth and is buoyed by the additional time for persons to take advantage.

“It was a different type of event (last year) in that normally we do a build-up, now we are in the market and are already promoting the event. We didn’t have as long a build-up last time. That has been taken into account. But overall, certainly locally, we would have had more viewership because 30,000 people couldn’t be in the stands so all of those people would have been watching it in-house,” Grant said.

“We like to see year-on-year growth, and we have been seeing but we do know that last year was a bit of an abnormal year, so we are interested in seeing how this year is going to pan out as we are more out of the pandemic than we would have been last year.”

The site is offering five days of pay-per-view showings as well as season passes to watch the entire competition.

Days one through three will cost US$10.99 while the last two days of the competition, days four and five, will attract costs of US$15.99 and US$20.99, respectively.

But, to sweeten the pot, there is an Early Early Bird special available until March 13. Those Early Bird tickets provide massive savings and only cost US$25.99 for all five days.

After March 13, viewers can still access early-bird specials for US$27.99. That package will remain available for an extra week before the regular season pass becomes available for US$34.99.

Fully vaccinated fans will be allowed into the National Stadium for the event, although the exact number to be permitted is still to be determined. Outside of that, Grant says viewers can expect the high-quality standards that they are used to.

“From the perspective of the technical (aspects) of the broadcast, there isn’t going to be a lot that is going to be different. We try to add some stuff each year. Last year we had the names of the athletes in the lanes for some of the finals. So we will be looking do to other graphic tweaks.”

Persons can also watch Champs on their phones or devices and purchase their packages using the 1spotmedia app.

daniel.wheeler@gleanerjm.com