With The World Games 2017 in Wroclaw, the Polish organizers distinguished themselves as diligent hosts and, above all, as expert communicators. Probably much more than organizers before them, they tried to ensure that the national and international signals coming out of their games were of an unquestionably high standard and befitting the fomats in demand by a changing broadcast marketplace. With the help of TV Coordinator Hagen Bossdorf, plus the hands-on support of the renowned International Sports Broadcasting (ISB), they drew up an ambitious production plan.
The organizers appointed an excellent host broadcaster with ATM, Poland's largest independent production company. The distribution of the coverage in unprecedented quality and quantity was done by Lagardère Sports. The numbers that were accrued are impressive and far exceed those of previous years: a total of 2,000 hours produced were viewed as 40 million hours worldwide. In Poland alone, 650 hours total were viewed by a cumulative audience of 59 million. Between ATM and ISB, 12 outside broadcasting trucks with up to 18 HD cameras each were deployed. Super-slow motion and innovative point-of-view cameras were used to enhance the quality of production further.
All this was the one pending assignment for IWGA and its hosts - as was to follow up production and distribution with proper monitoring and reporting afterwards. An exhaustive report on media of TWG 2017 was compiled by Sportscal, with broadcast monitoring done by Nielsen Sports. It is available here, the section on "Media" starting on page 70.
IWGA and The World Games had come close to accomplishing all of their missions on a number of occasions. The most recent games had all made significant progress in many - in fact, nearly all - of the important areas. Kaohsiung will always be remembered for the spectacular venues, Cali for the warmth of its welcome, and 2017 Wroclaw for the standard of its broadcasting.
Whether the individual sports were all satisfied with the way they were produced I don't know. But whoever wants to check what was broadcast in 2017 simply needs to go to the Olympic Channel. It's all still there!
Forever opinionated, I did have my problems with Paramotoring too. But only from the vantage point of a former member of the IWGA executive committee. Sports depending on mechanical propulsion should not be featured alongside other sports that can be considered compliant with the Olympic Charter rule 54.6.2. Unfair advantage! But IWGA opted to take on other "motorized" sports in the past and in the present: Trial (2005) and Speedway (2017).