Nightmare start for $1.7m IRONMAN Pro Series as ‘internet outage’ wipes out 70.3 Geelong coverage

The 2025 IRONMAN Pro Series got off to an unexpectedly muted start as technical difficulties pretty much wiped out the whole of the planned live broadcast of 70.3 Geelong early on Sunday (March 23).

The Australian race was the first of 18 in the performance-based world series which sees many of the world’s top professional triathletes vie for points and prize money towards the title of IRONMAN Pro Series champion, and their share of USD $1.7 million in year-end bonus pool payouts.

Geelong was a new addition to the 2025 Pro Series schedule, one of seven new race venues added to the calendar.

How Geelong broadcast went wrong

But it was obvious from early on in the live broadcast that there were some serious issues which meant virtually none of the race was actually broadcast live, a real shame as there were strong pro lineups on both the women’s and men’s side.

Just over two hours in – as the bike section was nearing a conclusion and after a long standby message on the coverage – studio hosts Greg Welch and Mirinda Carfrae jumped in to explain what the problem was.

Welch read out a statement which said: “Due to an internet outage at our production hub today and the inability to receive and transmit video or audio signals from our onsite cameras, we are unfortunately suspending our coverage of today’s IRONMAN 70.3 Geelong.

“Please follow along with our social and digital channels for live race updates. We deeply apologise for the lack of live coverage due to this unforeseen technical issue.”

And with that the screen went into a holding pattern again.

‘Unforeseen circumstances’ blamed

Unfortunate for all concerned, especially in the first race of the season and as Welch said these were “unforeseen” circumstances.

But it does ramp up the pressure on IRONMAN early in a season where we look like having evenly-matched professional lineups in their Pro Series and rival PTO’s T100 Triathlon World Tour.

In terms of the broadcast product the PTO has won huge praise over the last 12 months for a polished and informative offering, taking middle and long-distance triathlon to new levels and audiences. Their opening event of 2025 is T100 Singapore, the same April 5th-6th weekend as the second IRONMAN Pro Series race at 70.3 Oceanside.

You may not have been able to watch but you can read about how the races played out here.