Isle of Man TT Continues Worldwide Growth

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Isle of Man TT News

The growing interest in the TT Races worldwide is again reflected in a growing TV and on-line audience as well as a significant increase in commercial revenue compared with the 2011 event.

Independent TV monitoring company Kantar Media has analysed this year’s TT TV feed and estimated that the actual global audience is up 45% year-on-year to 23.1 million people. The Kantar Sport report estimated that the TT brand itself received coverage to the value of £4,017,180.

In total this year’s TT received over 400 hours of global television coverage. This was driven by 58 more broadcasts than 2011- a 23% increase in global coverage – including new broadcasts in China, India, Malaysia and South East Asia and growing viewing figures for the broadcasts. In the UK, the TT proved to be ITV4’s most popular sport broadcast, reporting an audience of 8,648,000 across the 14 programs, a 12% increase on the 2011 figures.

The official Isle of Man TT website iomtt.com, run by Manx firm Duke Marketing on behalf of the Isle of Man Government, reported an increase in traffic of more than 11% during the TT fortnight with 1.6 million visits, over 686,000 of which were first time visits.

The United Kingdom and Isle of Man accounted for the highest proportion, but visits from the USA were up almost 19% while the Australian on-line audience virtually doubled. The TT Live! service, which provides live sector times and speeds as well as Radio TT commentary via the Internet, was visited 251,000 times during the two weeks.

The TT’s social network presence has also been growing, with more than 88,000 people following on Facebook and 23,000 following on Twitter. Videos on the official TT YouTube channel have now been viewed in excess of 3.3 million times.

For the first time a Brazilian edition of the official TT review has been released. The footage was licensed to producers in Brazil by Duke, which has also concluded licensing deals for the review to again be released in Japan, Italy, Germany and Australia, as well as producing the UK and USA editions itself.

Available across the globe on Blu-ray and DVD formats, the TT review can now also be downloaded from the Apple iTunes store, taking the action-packed programme to a new audience.

The TT’s sponsorship and licensing revenue also grew by 16% while the newly introduced ‘remote’ grandstands around the course sold a total of 2959 tickets, in additional to the 4493 from the four sold out race days at the grandstand.

Visitor numbers were also on the increase with The Isle of Man Steam Packet Co reporting that they carried 11,237 motorcycles, a 4% year on year, increase to the highest figure since 2002, (excluding the centenary TT), while air passenger figures for the TT fortnight saw well over 41,100 passengers using Ronaldsway during the period 27th May up to the 10th June, an increase of over 4% for the same TT period in 2011.

Geoff Corkish (MBE, MHK, Political Member, Isle of Man Tourism) says: “These growing figures are a positive indication of the continued success of the Department of Economic Development’s strategy for the TT to generate commercial revenue, boost the Island’s profile worldwide encouraging more visitors to the Isle of Man and benefiting the local tourism economy.”

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