Monaco MON - The IAAF World Championships in Athletics, which open on 25 August in Osaka Japan, will be broadcast around the world achieving impressive global distribution of the IAAF’s most important competition.

The IAAF has given first priority to free to air broadcast agreements in order to maximize the promotional reach of the event and is happy to confirm that the event will be seen terrestrially in approximately 85% of territories worldwide.

The IAAF has previously announced a breakthrough deal in the USA where the event will be seen for the first time across three platforms: namely free (NBC), cable (Versus) and broadband (WCSN). NBC and Versus will broadcast in excess of 50 hours live, delayed and repeats and WCSN will cover the entire event live.

In addition to long term terrestrial partners such as TBS in Japan, CCTV in China, KBS in Korea, CBC in Canada, SBS in Australia and CMC in the Caribbean region, new terrestrial deals cover areas of Latin America and Sub Saharan Africa. A number of these broadcasting deals extend through to the next edition of the IAAF World Championships in Athletics, to be held in Berlin in 2009.

In Europe and Northern Africa the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has confirmed terrestrial transmission in over 40 territories.

"I am delighted that we will have virtually unprecedented terrestrial broadcast coverage of Osaka 2007," said IAAF President Lamine Diack. "This is part of our on-going strategy to build up our fan base by allowing as many people as possible, all over the world, to enjoy the action from our top competitions."

The EBU is IAAF’s European TV Partner and Dentsu is their exclusive worldwide Marketing Partner and TV Partner for the rest of the world.