
Two Coloradans to compete in 37th season of The Amazing Race alongside friends and family
The competitors are part of the 14 teams that will confront challenges and take part in amazing adventures as they race around the world. This year, the show features its largest cast ever.
This year, Erika Papadeas of Englewood, Colo. has teamed up with her mother, Melinda, who lives in Chandler, Ariz., to take on the race.
Another Coloradan, Carrigain Scadden of Denver, is competing this year along with Bernie Gutierrez, a friend from Dallas.
"This season 14 teams will embark on an unforgettable adventure," said Bertram van Munster and Elise Doganieri, co-creators and executive producers of THE AMAZING RACE. "Traveling around the globe for a stop in Osaka, Japan, where they will experience a modern-day bullet train in a thriving city and then immerse themselves in a 12,000-year-old tradition, performing with a taiko drum group. They will feel the adrenaline rush of skydiving over Dubai's breathtaking cityscape contrasted with another stop, for the first time on THE AMAZING RACE, in the countryside of Bulgaria, where they will participate in a traditional folk dance. Adding a new city this season, teams will visit the medieval village of Strasbourg, France, which will feel like stepping into a fairytale. For our season of surprises, there is no end to the drama, twists and turns until we see who the winners are!"
Some classic game pieces like the Fast Forward and U-Turn are waiting for our competitors, along with new ones like a Fork in the Road. During the first leg of the race in Hong Kong, teams will have to choose which direction and route to take to the Pit Stop, creating two parallel races and eliminating two teams.
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Jeff Kmiotek, Michael Zinman and Andrew Watnick have been in unscripted TV production for decades. Kmiotek became a producer after working in a variety of unscripted formats including game and cooking shows and garnered an Emmy nomination for his work on 'The Masked Singer.' Zinman has a background in visual design and creative producing and also received an Emmy nomination in 2014. Watnick got his start in casting before moving to development and eventually producing on shows like 'The Masked Singer' and 'The Amazing Race.' But a September 2024 encounter in Las Vegas led the three to take on a different kind of gamble than the city is known for: to break away from their careers in traditional TV and use their cumulative media production knowledge to create their own production company for online content. The three observed a changing tide in unscripted TV production over the last few years. 'Budgets are getting slashed, costs are getting slashed, and schedules are getting slashed,' Kmiotek said. Meanwhile, online platforms like YouTube have experienced an accelerated rise in popularity. 'I'd watch YouTube and there's such amazing content,' Kmiotek added. 'They don't have to go through the process that we had to go through on network TV with all the different cooks in the kitchen and executives and notes.' YouTube is experiencing a massive growth in revenue for creators who post videos on the platform. A recent ad revenue forecast by WPP Media found that online creator-driven revenue is up 20% from 2024 and is expected to double next year, while TV revenue is expected to increase by only 1%. YouTube also reached a 44.8% viewership share in May 2025, according to Nielsen, passing the figures for cable and broadcast TV for the first time. 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Companies like Jubilee, nectar and Cut have built followings in the tens of millions across social media platforms with their unscripted content. Episodes easily reach view counts in the millions, sometimes surpassing the Nielsen ratings for recent seasons of 'The Bachelor.' And in January, the popular YouTube show 'Pop the Balloon' was even parodied on 'Saturday Night Live.' While scripted shows often require large budgets made possible by major entertainment companies, unscripted content can be filmed with pared-down resources and easily posted online. The Elixir team saw a gap in this growing market that their expertise in TV production could fill. 'Most of those shows are [filmed against] white stark backgrounds… But as a way to differentiate we said OK, what if we do those fun simple concepts… But we're giving it a better aesthetic,' Kmiotek said. 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