Watch the world’s best ice skaters this weekend live in Spokane, or on Japanese TV

If you’re in Japan over the weekend and hanker for a bit of Spokane, tune in to Nippon TV, one of the country’s leading networks.

It’ll be broadcasting the inaugural 2016 KOSÉ Team Challenge Cup, the first of its kind event, and it’s being held at the Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena beginning Friday.

“It’s like hosting Super Bowl I,” said Toby Steward of Star USA, the company producing the event. “ There’s always a first. We’re honored to be holding the first.”

Three teams representing Asia, Europe and North America, with a total of 42 figure skaters, will compete for a $500,000 purse – and a bit of continental pride.

“It’s continent versus continent versus continent,” said Barb Beddor, also of Star USA. “It truly is the best of the best. A lot of countries don’t have the depth for all the different disciplines across the board. This is like gymnastics. The athletes compete individually, but the points go to the team total.”

The International Skating Union-sanctioned competition will have individual events, pairs skating and ice dancing.

The Olympic gold medalist and world champion Kristi Yamaguchi will lead the North American team. The individual skaters on the team are Gracie Gold, Gabrielle Daleman, Jason Brown and Nam Nguyen. Skaters on the pairs teams are Meagan Duhamel, Eric Radford, Alexa Scimeca and Chris Knierim. And Kaitlyn Weaver, Andrew Poje, Madison Chock and Evan Bates are the ice dancers.

Spokane has hosted two other successful figure skating events, and their popularity led to this weekend’s event, said Renee Felton, a spokeswoman with U.S. Figure Skating.

“The decision was made to come to Spokane in large part because Spokane has such a large history of supporting figure skating events,” Felton said. “We know that we’re dealing with an engaged audience. We’re definitely hoping that we can make them excited for a format they’ve never seen before.”

That format includes short format skating by men and women on Friday; pairs, ice dancing and free skate on Saturday; and exhibitionary performances from the teams’ top players Sunday.

Still, no one expects this weekend’s event to match those previous championship events, 15-day contests that broke national attendance records.

In 2007, the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Spokane drew almost 155,000 people. Three years later, the same event had an attendance of more than 158,000.

According to Peyton Scheller, a spokeswoman with Visit Spokane, the 2007 event had an economic impact of $19 million. The 2010 championships had a $26.9 million economic impact.

This weekend, organizers expect about 30,000 people to attend.

“And that’s a wild guess,” said Beddor, but she added that this weekend might be more fun for people – especially the first night with its $132,000 purse.

“People ask me, ‘If you could buy only one session right now what would you buy?’ Well, I love the opening ceremony and the short program,” she said. “For somebody like me with a short attention span, that’s for me.”

Steward agreed.

“It’s faster. Everything’s compacted into two and a half minutes. There’s no waste of time. There’s no fluff,” he said.