The current deal, confirmed in July 2017, is with ITN Productions.

The next partnership deal will be effective from January 1 2025 and will include, most notably, the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo in the first year, at the stadium built for the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics, which hosted the sport without spectators in 2021 due to COVID restrictions.

The World Athletics Championships regularly draws a viewing audience of one billion people from around the globe.

World Athletics chief executive Jon Ridgeon said: "We launched our current partnership with ITN in 2017 and they have been a great partner, helping to elevate the quality of our host broadcast production and delivering more value to our rights holding broadcasters - and we want to thank them for their excellent work so far.

"As we look to step up our efforts in this area, now feels like the right time to review the future and we look forward to receiving some exciting proposals for how to continue to grow our sport.

"Broadcast is a fast-moving industry and has advanced substantially in the last five years.

"It is in the best commercial interests of our sport to understand the market again and make sure that we have the ideal production partner to take us forward to the end of the decade. 

"Innovation is what we are striving for, and we are looking for a partner who has that same vision and can provide ground-breaking coverage of our major championships."

The first phase of the search process being launched today is a Request for Information (RFI) to identify media companies who have the capability, advanced technology, personnel and experience required, and the appetite for innovation to deliver a world class production to the satisfaction of a global slate of rights-holding broadcasters.

This will be followed by a Request for Proposal phase, and a decision phase, with the successful candidate to be appointed before the end of this year.

Potential partners can acknowledge their interest by emailing a response to [email protected] by March 20.

World Athletics will provide a unique log in and password to access the portal where interested parties will find all documents needed for completion of the bidding process.

Instructions can also be sent on how to use the portal to submit the required documents.

The Expression of Interest phase will run through to April 28 2023.

Successful candidates will be sent a scope of work to respond to in early May with final tenders due by June 9 2023.