Posted: March 4, 2005

Athletics: LA Marathon To Offer Live Video Webcast

From David Monti

(c) 2004 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved RaceResultsWeekly.com

LOS ANGELES (03-Mar) -- Officials of the City of Los Angeles Marathon announced today that their marathon would be shown live in full streaming video on the worldwide web, a first for a major marathon in the United States.

The local NBC affiliate here, NBC4, will feed their live local television broadcast through the internet allowing computer users in any country to watch the race, live. The race will be televised on Sunday, 06-Mar beginning at 7:30 a.m. local time (Los Angeles is at GMT minus eight hours). That would put the race on at 4:30 p.m. in Western Europe. The webcast can be accessed at www.nbc4.tv or by linking to it from LAMarathon.com.

The Osaka International Ladies Marathon was the first race to offer streaming video back in 1998. It is surprising that so few races employ the practice, considering the reduced cost of bandwidth and the surge in the number of households wired for high speed internet in the last two years. Stumbling blocks include a lack of technical know how and restrictive television contracts which prohibit streaming.