BBC could lose Olympic rights

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/dec/02/bbc-sportsrights

2012 is secured, but the IOC have turned down the European Broadcasting Unions bid for the 2014 and 2016 games for the first time in 20 years, forcing individual countries to negotiate their own rights.

Italy's state broadcaster has already lost the rights to Sky, but at least here in the UK the Olympics are protected for free to air television, though some folk with little common sense believe the digital switchover means we won't care about that in the future, so the crown jewels list could be torn up. Highly unlikely I think though, and even if it was significantly reduced, I'm sure the Olympics would remain on it.

So if it's just FTA broadcasters bidding, ITV are probably the only serious rival to the BBC, and can we really see them bidding aggressively for it. Or could we see a return to them sharing the rights, as happened up until 1988 when BBC, ITV and C4 broadcast the games.

ITV, there have no money to bid,

What if, say, RTL acquires the European Olympic rights for all of its stations in various countries? Such multinational package deals are common (that's why there was a joint EBU bid), and in this hypothetical case, Five would become the Olympic broadcaster in the UK.

Surely it's still highly likely the BBC will get the rights in the end?

The IOC aren't stupid, they get a huge amount of expertise and prestige from the Olympics being on the BBC.

And I'm sure many would say this is the sort of event the licence fee should be spent on securing.

Of course 2014 and 2016 will be after DSO so it does throw some uncertainty in - but I still think the BBC will win the day,

Who knows what the TV landscape will be like in 2014/2016.

It's a long way off... any company could bid for them and then make sure that they can provide free-to-air coverage nearer the time. That is if the rules about 'Crown Jewels sports events still exists then.

No idea what that article means by 'Sky will have 95% reach across the country by 2014'. 95% of what? How do they know?

This is a stupid move.The only reason these events carry the prestige they do is because they reach so many people. If they start cutting off non pay TV customers then less and less people will care about it at all meaning the value of the rights will fall over time and the event itself will suffer.

Right, but there are other free-to-air channels that could theoretically broadcast the Olympics. Pay-TV is not the only alternative to the BBC.

Lets think about this, are there any other broadcasters in the UK other than BBC currently who have the resources and man power to produce tv coverage on an Olympic scale?

ITV have historically always held the rights to the Olympics by virtue of them being fully paid up EBU members, it's just that since 1988 they've chosen not to cover them. C4 covered the 88 games because in those days they were sort of "ITV-2".

Can anybody verify one way or the other whether ITV are still EBU members ?

http://www.ebu.ch/members/members_active.php

UK Independent Broadcasting are a member and they include:

All the ITV Regions
C4
S4C

Why? Is there a great risk that the Olympics might not be shown in the UK?

In that case it's quite surprising that S4C don't do anything at all with the games, even if it was just a nightly highlights package.