It is as South African as braaivleis, rugby and sunny skies, but the Comrades Marathon is also the country’s biggest single-day sports event.
The Durban July might feature the sport of kings, and the Soweto Derby might pack the fans in, but the annual pilgrimage of 90km or so between Durban and Pietermaritzburg is in a league of its own.
“It’s the biggest one-day event in SA by a country mile,” said Nielsen SA director Kelvin Watt.
“In terms of people attending, the size of the broadcast, the number of the viewers, obviously the number of the participants, it’s pretty much on every metric the biggest single, one-day event in the country.”
The 95th edition of the race, which attracted 14,589 local entries and will use about 3,500 volunteers along the route, was set to enter a new era when the gun signalled the start at 5.30am this morning, with SuperSport taking over the television from the SABC, using its Variety 4 channel.
The pay channel’s 13-hour broadcast to 54 countries, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, was being put together by a crew of 120 using three outside broadcast units (OBUs), 49 cameras, including a low-light camera, to film the pre-dawn action.
“As a broadcast production, it’s one of our biggest ever,” said senior communications manager Clinton van der Berg.
The only event in which they’ve used more personnel and equipment has been the Nedbank Gold Challenge, a four-day event, with staff totalling up to 300, 56 cameras and also three OBUs.
Preparation for the Comrades broadcast started four months ago and included eight route reconnaissance days, Van der Berg added.
At the last staging of the race in 2019, 5.5-million unique SA viewers watched at least five minutes of the race on SABC. In 2013 they hit 7.9-million.
In a year more than 10-million SA viewers watch SuperSport’s Variety 4 channel, which features across all their packages.
Watt, who hails from Pietermaritzburg, growing up with the Comrades on his doorstep, believes SuperSport can capitalise on its global appeal. “It is one of the few world-class events that we own,” said Watt.
“The days of us being a haven for world-class boxing events or so many other things have gone. This truly is not only world class, it is the most important ultra-marathon in the world … I think what you’ll see down the line is SuperSport will work with a lot of their global broadcast partners to make this a truly global property, although we might not see it this year.”
In 2019, Nielsen research showed that when it came to levels of awareness, Comrades was the second-highest — behind only the Rugby World Cup. The Durban July, in third place, was the only other local event in the top 10, which featured the English Premier League and Champions League.
This truly is not only world class, it is the most important ultra-marathon in the world
— Nielsen SA director Kelvin Watt
“Obviously [SA has] had big events like Cricket World Cup finals, Rugby World Cup finals and football and those sort of things that we’ve hosted,” said Watt. “But as a year-in, year-out event, I guess the last time that anything was close to matching it was probably 1992 with the Kyalami Grand Prix. With the scale of everything involved, the amount of production, the amount of people attending, the TV viewers as a single-day event ...”
The Comrades has embodied the ethos of sportsmanship starting from the inaugural race in 1921 when Koster farmer Bill Rowan, on his way to victory, stopped to help a rival who had twisted his ankle on the dusty road, massing his leg, helping him up and accompanying him for a little while before continuing.
It is as much about the masses finishing as it is about the winners breaking the tape because everyone is pushing their bodies to the limit. “Comrades Day is singularly the most important sporting event across South Africa because it is so inclusive,” said Watt.
“It means so much to so many people. Everyone’s got a Comrades story, whether you’ve run it, whether your parents have, or whether as a kid you woke up and watched it.”
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