Ironman and Facebook Live
A good news bad new story. Ironman and Facebook have announced that Ironman will use Facebook Live for the next two years, with a third year option for 2021.
GOOD NEWS
Facebook surely has a platform to broadcast to the world, avoiding the buffering and related connectivity issues that we've seen in the past with the 10+ hour Ironman broadcasts. Realistically, no generally available TV/Cable broadcaster is ever going to show Ironman Live.
BAD NEWS
Facebook will be collecting all the data from the viewers, especially if your are logged in to your Facebook ID, but not just when you are.
At least based on my limited viewing in 2018, you were not required to be logged-in to Facebook. However, unless your ran in an "incognito window" or similar, Facebook dropped a number of cookies into your browser which it could then use later. Also, if you tried to click on any other link, maybe to see a Pro-athletes FB page, you were immediately dropped into the Facebook login page, with any details FB knew about you.
FAKE NEWS?
Talking of data, the press release boldly claims:
"Triathlon Fans Have Spoken: Exceptional Fan Response In Year One"
It doesn't though provide any details to support this claim, how many, where from, what they said etc.