ST. PAUL, Minn. — Maxwell Dunne is a 26-year-old substitute teacher from Burnsville, Minn. who in the winter months performs in front of thousands as a Red Bull Crashed Ice athlete. He’s excited to perform in front of a hometown crowd on Saturday when athletes from around the world lace up their ice skates to participate in the extreme sport of ice cross downhill at the Red Bull Crashed Ice event in St. Paul, Minn.
This year, in order to promote the passion that comes from the athletes and fans at the Red Bull Crashed Ice series, the four events are being live streamed in the U.S. Red Bull TV coverage of the series had previously been geo-blocked from the U.S., but is now being made available on the digital network that streams on mobile phones, tablets, consoles, OTT devices, Smart TVs and online at www.redbull.tv.
And when American athletes like Dunne are out of the country in Red Bull Crashed Ice events in France, Finland and Canada, the events can also be streamed on Facebook Live as a simulcast on the Red Bull Facebook page for the first time this year. The event in St. Paul will be streamed live on Red Bull TV, Facebook Live and also YouTube.
“Instead of my family trying to figure out illegal ways to watch it,” Dunne said, smiling.
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Red Bull TV’s 90-minute live programming in St. Paul starts at 8 p.m. CT and will feature the men’s round of 16 through the final along with the women’s final as four skaters at a time race down a walled 340-meter ice track complete with bumps, sharp turns, vertical drops, and a plateau to skate up toward before the finish line.
Cameron Naasz, the defending men’s champion for the St. Paul event who topped the time trials this year, is very much into promoting a sport that has grown and become a passion for him. While athleticism and a thrill-seeking nature is what powers ice cross downhill, Naasz also uses business terms now as well and call it content for Red Bull that he and his competitors are producing.
“Then Red Bull can run away with it,” said Naasz, who is from St. Cloud, Minn.
There is worldwide demand for that content, and it’s just not from the thousands attending the events in person. The 90-minute Facebook Live stream of the Red Bull Crashed Ice action last month in Jyväskylä, Finland received 2.2 million views. The week earlier, the Facebook Live stream from Marseille, France got 1.3 million views.
Live streaming allows a niche sport to receive an international audience that this year now includes the U.S. market. The average American may have never heard of ice cross downhill. But once someone outside of Minnesota sees for the first time the athletes getting air time on the fast-paced ice track with the Cathedral of St. Paul as its backdrop, it can be hard to look away.