Lee Perkins expects record online viewers for Champs

Sports marketing consultant Tanya Lee Perkins says that she expects high demand for online subscribers for next week's ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys and Girls' Athletics Championships (Champs) as the competition is set to take place behind closed doors.

ISSA cancelled the 2020 edition of the competition because of the COVID-19 pandemic and faced challenges in staging it this year as the date was pushed back twice because of a spike in COVID-19 cases. With strict restrictions in place at the National Stadium, the championships will go ahead and Perkins says that the long wait for Champs will see a high level of viewership on television and other online platforms as fans are not allowed to attend.

"I think people have been waiting for track and field to get back to its height. It's the biggest high school track and field meet in the world and I think just by virtue of that people are looking to see what the performances are like," Perkins told STAR Sports.

This year's Champs represents the culmination of a chaotic junior track and field season which started later than scheduled in February as the Government fine-tuned safety protocols for the meets and saw a three-week pause as a result of the tightening of restrictions. The event is being offered on pay-per-view streaming and Perkins says with fans appetites for high-level athletics, the return of Champs will enjoy high levels of online viewership.

"We have seen even at the senior level that people have been excited by what happened in Miramar with Sha'Carri Richardson (running sixth-fastest 100m time in history with 10.72 seconds) and last weekend with Elaine Thompson-Herah running 10.78 seconds," Perkins says. "They have been training for a while and everybody is excited to see what times we are going to get and so I believe we are going to have a great event and that it will be oversubscribed online."

With the 2020 cancellation, Kingston College and Edwin Allen High return as defending boys and girls champions, respectively, from their triumphs in 2019.

- D.W.