● From our sister site, TheSportsExaminer.com ●
A major change in the way the Olympic Games are televised is underway as the combination of new technologies and the pandemic is shrinking one of the biggest users of space, power and people.
The IOC Web site posted an important story on Tuesday (2nd), entitled “Olympic Games broadcasting via the cloud: technology at the service of storytelling,” underscoring the massive changes taking place in Tokyo.
Key to this is the introduction of a cloud-based signal distribution (noted in detail last October), which eliminates the need for a broadcaster to actually be on-site in Tokyo to produce live coverage of the Games.
Said Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) Chief Executive Yiannis Exarchos (GRE):
“We were lucky in the sense that we have the TOP partnership with Alibaba. Alibaba is one of the key players in the world in cloud technology, and together with them we developed what we call the OBS Cloud, which is a platform which allows broadcasters to receive content remotely on the cloud and even to work on this content remotely on a cloud basis.
“The major thinking, and what we want them to do and help them to do, is reduce the presence [of broadcast staff] that can happen anywhere in the world. To be shipping servers and setting up equipment in a city for things that can happen on the cloud is one of the things we want to avoid.
“If you have a journalist in the mixed zone you can receive everything [else] back in your home country.”
This is a major change in Games organization and will have far-reaching impacts:
● The massive amount of space, time and money needed to assemble an International Broadcast Center in the host city will be dramatically reduced. This is a benefit to the organizers, to the broadcasters and to fans, who will be able to access thousands of hotel rooms used by broadcast technicians.
● The space needed for broadcast commentary positions inside stadia will be markedly reduced over time, again freeing up hundreds of seats for spectators at most sites. Broadcasters pay for these positions to be installed and each one takes up 6-12 spectator seats, depending on the configuration in each venue. The experience of commentators calling events remotely during the pandemic will be a permanent change for many Olympic events that will now be available in real time anywhere in the world.
● The “mixed zone” area, where media can meet athletes as they exit the field of play, will become increasingly important. Introduced on a Games-wide basis in Los Angeles in 1984, the space needed for this function, and for formal news conference-style settings, will now increase exponentially, especially for Paris 2024 and beyond.
The IOC story notes:
“The International Broadcast Centre (IBC) in Tokyo is going to be 25 per cent smaller than the Rio IBC, with 27 per cent fewer broadcasters present. This trend is going only one way. The IBC for the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 is already small enough for the Organising Committee to have combined it with the Main Press Centre.”
All of this opens substantial new opportunities for Games coverage, and the rights-holders, press, photographers and non-rights-holding broadcasters will be scrambling to take advantage. How future organizers and the IOC are able to adapt to this could allow for a huge expansion of the impact of the Games worldwide; it’s one of the most exciting changes to Games coverage ever.
~ Rich Perelman
Be the first to comment