Last year Rich Froning and team pulled off an In-Person Qualifying Event with only a few months to plan. The 2025 Mayhem Classic brought in Hamilton Road Productions to broadcast the competition. While it was paired down (compared to all the bells and whistles of the CrossFit Games), it was a high-quality stream.
In the “Life at Mayhem | Mayhem Monday” video published earlier this week, Froning shares a little insight into the 2026 Mayhem Classic.
“You got [Mayhem] Classic stuff over there talking about the broadcast prices. Which, sorry everyone, but if we lose as much money as we did last year on the broadcast, you’re probably going to get prepackaged or post-production event videos versus broadcast because I love you, but I’m not in love with you,” Froning said.
They quickly move on to other topics.
A couple of the shots in this scene show the whiteboard that Froning is pointing to, but it’s rather blurry and almost indecipherable. You can kinda make out a few words, “Post Coverage”, “Full Live”, “Proximity to Field”, etc.
A lot of it is just too blurry to really see what they had written on the whiteboard.
But thanks to AI, I was able to see what was written on the whiteboard. Some of the letters/words are still too hard to read, but it’s amazing what can be done these days.
Here is the original screengrab:
Here is the unblurred image from AI:
On the left you can see that one of Mayhem’s goals is to “make the on-site experience as amazing as possible.” Last year they did a great job and can only imagine 2026 will be even better.
One of the cool things last year was how close spectators were to the action. Those at the finish line were just a few feet from the “bopper” used to record their time on an event.
The main part of the whiteboard is evaluating options for the broadcast.
As Rich said, there is a chance that they do not provide a true livestream and instead upload “post coverage” as live. Sounds a lot like what The Sevan Podcast did last year at the NorCal Classic.
If they go this route it appears they would only focus on the “top heats”. They then appear to brainstorm on what they would need if they went this route.
Then on the right, is the full “live broadcast”. Under it, there is a cost of $150,000. This is in line with what Rory McKernan said last year when talking about all-in cost to broadcast last year’s Mayhem Classic.
There are some additional bullet points below that, likely various things that would need to be considered with a livestream.
And then the bottom right is a bit curious…
There is a bullet point that reads:
Redbull on-set
cost or CW Event
WFP
Is Mayhem in talks with Redbull to help with the broadcast? Are they looking at how WFP did their livestream with respect to Redbull as a sponsor?
I have no idea, but it’s interesting.
The 2026 Mayhem Classic is April 17-19 in Cookeville, Tennessee. It is the first Semifinal of the season, and like I said, was a great experience last year. So if you can go, I highly recommend it. If you can’t stay tuned to find out what the broadcast experience will be like.
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