I think they made it clear at the time that they were never going to top 2012 - as a home games, of course they were going to go all out, and they knew back then what the direction of travel for the budgets for future games would be.
The BBC’s coverage of all winter & summer Olympics since 2012 has been woeful.
Harsh - 2014 (both Commonwealth and Winter Olympics) and 2016 were pretty top notch and actually somewhat improved on London - 2016 having something like 8 streams on Freeview for example compared to just a couple for London. In terms of interactive choice though the deal made for the Olympics means the coverage just isn't what we're used too and it's a shame rather than offering everything they can for the Commonwealth Games they're just scaling it back to make their Olympics coverage look less woeful.
The BBC’s coverage of all winter & summer Olympics since 2012 has been woeful.
Harsh - 2014 (both Commonwealth and Winter Olympics) and 2016 were pretty top notch and actually somewhat improved on London - 2016 having something like 8 streams on Freeview for example compared to just a couple for London. In terms of interactive choice though the deal made for the Olympics means the coverage just isn't what we're used too and it's a shame rather than offering everything they can for the Commonwealth Games they're just scaling it back to make their Olympics coverage look less woeful.
Aren't the BBC sharing the 2020 Olympics rights with Discovery? How will that affect the BBC's coverage? Will they only be able to broadcast x amount of hours a day?
On Satellite there were 24 individual recordable streams in the EPG for London 2012, along with uninterrupted coverage on BBC Three, One and Two.
That will never happen again.
Aren't the BBC sharing the 2020 Olympics rights with Discovery? How will that affect the BBC's coverage? Will they only be able to broadcast x amount of hours a day?
No limit on the number of hours but there is a limit of one linear channel and one red button type steam at a time. It’s one of the best deals any FTA channel in Europe will have.
Aren't the BBC sharing the 2020 Olympics rights with Discovery? How will that affect the BBC's coverage? Will they only be able to broadcast x amount of hours a day?
No limit on the number of hours but there is a limit of one linear channel and one red button type steam at a time. It’s one of the best deals any FTA channel in Europe will have.
So the Olympics are not shown FTA anywhere else in Europe? I think that's a pretty poor deal for the BBC imo, it will be a big shock for viewers compared to their 2012 and 2016 Olympics coverage. Wimbledon gets more extensive coverage.
Will Discovery have coverage similar to the BBC's 2012, 2014 and 2016 Games coverages?
So the Olympics are not shown FTA anywhere else in Europe? I think that's a pretty poor deal for the BBC imo, it will be a big shock for viewers compared to their 2012 and 2016 Olympics coverage. Wimbledon gets more extensive coverage.
Will Discovery have coverage similar to the BBC's 2012, 2014 and 2016 Games coverages?
Discovery have the rights to everything so can (as they did with the Winter Olympics) market their coverage (heavily using Eurosport Player alongside their two main channels) as the only place to see every moment live. For the Winters they offered several temporary extra channels on Virgin and BT.
There is FTA coverage in every European country but how much varies. Many are limited to the required IOC minimum of 200 hours of coverage for the Summer games and 100 hours for the Winters available FTA. Others have different restrictions- in Germany for the recent winter games the public broadcasters ARD & ZDF couldn’t broadcast anything in (local) primetime, although in Germany Eurosport 1 (but not 2) is FTA and available in a lot of homes. In other countries certain sports are exclusive to Eurosport / Discovery channels or the FTA broadcaster (often a Discovery owned channel) can only show a certain event or the finals of an event of a competitior from that country is involved.
The BBC deal by comparison is good - whilst it heavily limits the number of channels there is no restriction on how much coverage there can be on those channels, nor of any particular event, nor is there any required delay before showing something that didn’t get shown live. It’ll be a big loss for the Summer games but it could have been a lot worse.
Some countries did get up to three streams in addition to broadcast coverage, so the BBC didn't have the best deal. It's also important to remember that for 2018-20 it isn't about what the BBC could get off Eurosport, it's what the BBC gave to Eurosport. The BBC had full rights for 2018-20 but gave them up along with tens of million of quid in return for limited rights to 2022-24. They paniced and gave up too much, too early, rather than holding out in the knowledge there has been virtually no interest from their commercial rivals to take on the coverage since ITV and C4 last covered the Olympics in 1988.
In fairness, aside from the odd big home medal event how many average punters are going to care about the Commonwealth Games anyway? It's slightly different when it's being held in the UK, but otherwise it's seen by many as a bit of an anachronism. The "friendly games" tag is a giveaway.
If someone's willing to pay extra cash to secure it for their channel, and if people are keen on paying that channel for the privilege, then let them.