“The likes of The Guardian, the New York Times, China’s People’s Daily, the Financial Times and Forbes covered the Race multiple times – and that’s a key measure for us,” he added. “We saw a 140% increase in online news audience, from a similar number of articles to last race.”

Similarly, in terms of TV news output, the Race’s content was featured by bigger audience channels, leading to a 27% increase in publicity value in this area, to €293 million measured by global media monitoring company Repucom.

Meanwhile, race organisers have continued to pioneer new ways to tell the story of this nine-month human endeavour.

The official Volvo Ocean Race app, delivering tailored, mobile-first content around the clock, received 391,000 downloads during the event – that’s more than double the previous edition.

And the Volvo Ocean Race social media platforms also experienced growth and high levels of engagement – with 1.2 million fans signing up to follow the event on Facebook and Twitter.

The Race continues to deliver highly lucrative opportunities for sponsors. The average team media value, measured by Repucom, was €47.5 million.

Even Team Vestas Wind, which spent much of the Race shore-bound due to damaging the boat in Leg 2, achieved a media value of €28 million.

For the 11 host ports of the race, the financial results were similarly positive. The economic impact of the Race on Alicante, the home of the event’s HQ, was measured at €89.3 million by PricewaterhouseCooper.

The next edition of the Volvo Ocean Race – the 13th – will begin in Alicante, in 2017. Seven ports – Alicante, Auckland, Cape Town, Cardiff, Gothenburg, Lisbon and Newport – have already been announced, with the full route to be disclosed in  2016.

via Race Report confirms 2014-15 edition as best yet| Volvo Ocean Race 2014-2015.