The World Match Racing Tour, the leading professional sailing series will have live television coverage of its next event, the Korea Match Cup to be held in San Hwasung City in the Gyeonggi Province of Korea. The event will take place in new identically supplied and purpose built in Korea, KM36’s from June 10-15. Live television coverage of the event will take place on Saturday and Sunday, June 14 and 15 respectively.

Cliff Webb, Executive Producer from 1080 Media is heading up the team who will produce the images for worldwide broadcast. “We have a team of 45 people from around the world and locally who have extensive experience in live television coverage, many of whom worked on the America’s Cup in Valencia last year” said Webb “We are also working very closely with our local Korean broadcasting partner KBS. It’s a great team of people and a very exciting project to provide live coverage of the richest prize money event on the Tour” Commentary will be provided by Peter “PJ” Montgomery, Peter Lester and Martin Tasker all from New Zealand and who have been involved in several America’s Cup broadcasts. The production will also include Virtual Eye animation that was used extensively during all of the live coverage of both the America’s Cup and the World Tour’s Monsoon Cup last year.

There will be onboard cameramen getting close up shots from the heat of battle along with each skipper wearing a microphone to really bring the action alive. Coverage will be made available to every continent through a combination of live broadcasts and highlights shows with broadcasters stretching throughout Asia, Europe, Africa and Australasia, including Sky Sports NZ, Showtime Middle East, Eurosport Asia and others. It will also be available on the internet through various portals.

In addition to the live coverage, a 25 minute highlights show on the Korea Match Cup will be distributed to broadcasters daily. The highlights programme will be available online and via satellite each evening. “We are very excited about live worldwide television coverage of this new event here in Korea” said Dong Young Kim, the organizer of the Korea Match Cup “This event is great for Korea and for the future of Korean sailing”

“Live television is always exciting as there are so many variables to contend with, not least of which are the weather conditions of course, and we need to work closely with the race officials to ensure we get the best coverage and the maximum amount of racing within our time slots” explained Executive Producer, Cliff Webb. World Tour officials often have to adjust the semi-finals and finals to conform to the live coverage including no boat swaps, a shorter time between races, and the number of races needed to win. “Live coverage can be challenging but it’s well worth the effort in terms of the added media exposure for the event and the sponsors” said World Tour Director, Craig Mitchell.

Twelve of the top teams in the world plan to compete in stage 3 of the World Tour. The 12 teams will be announced shortly in the next few days. Team Pindar skippered by Britain’s Ian Williams is the current World Tour leader with 27 points after two of nine events.