Olympics Update - to remain on the BBC until at least 2024

Breaking

BBC Sublicences 2018 and 2020 games back to Discovery in turn. Games will appear on both BBC and Eurosport Channels in the UK

The BBC will be the exclusive free to air Olympic broadcaster in the UK for the next five Games. Discovery has committed to strike innovative partnerships across the continent to ensure that the Olympic Games remains accessible to as wide an audience as possible.

The BBC and Discovery Communications today announce a long-term Olympic Games agreement in the UK, building on a 30-year partnership between the two global media organisations. The innovative deal means that the BBC will sub-license (from Discovery) exclusive free-to-air audio-visual and non-exclusive radio rights to the 2022 and 2024 Olympic Games. In turn, Discovery will sub-license (from the BBC) exclusive pay-TV rights in the UK to the 2018 and 2020 Olympic Games.


from ……..

MEDIACENTRE on BBC.CO.UK
02-Feb-2016 @ 14:07

EDIT

Some content will be exclusive to Eurosport from 2018 onwards. Reports indicate BBC to be restricted to 2 live events at any time.

So, the BBC have actually saved some money, by handing the full UK exclusive rights which Eurosport then brought off the BBC.

Wonder if Charlie Sale of the Daily Mail will mention that, or will he go down the usual road of slagging off the BBC for selling some of the rights to Eurosport.

Not sure how I feel about this. It is undoubtedly a success for the BBC to retain free-to-air rights however the scope of coverage will be greatly reduced and this is a worry.

This is terrible - another step in the Tories sending the BBC back to the 90s.

It is also such a poor deal financially - the BBC have basically given Eurosport £110m (nearly an 8th of what they paid for the European rights for 4, not 2 Olympics) and unrestricted rights to 2018/20 - and in return got basically **** all. Two streams is awful. They should at the very least have the right to show every Britain competing and every medal event live.

It also makes a mockery of the crown jewels list - the World Cup games featuring no British interest can't be shown exclusive on pay-TV so as the Olympics is also on that list there is no reason any second of the games should be aloud to be exclusive to pay-TV either. Still find it shameful that the IOC went against their principles and did a behind closed door agreement with Eurosport without giving the PSBs a chance. Indeed if the BBC is willing to pay £110m for the rights themselves the IOC have been seriously short changed by Eurosport.

I may have missed something, but I don't believe a figure has been revealed? Where has £110m come from?

Reported, but unconfirmed, by Media Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/feb/02/olympics-bbc-discovery-deal

To put that into perspective the BBC is believed to have paid just £60m for full rights to London 2012.

P.S. Looking at DVBs edit in the opening post please don't say they're cutting to two streams from 2018. Wouldn't surprise me as that's the way the BBC has done recent deals but that **** sucks even more when those rights were on the BBC's terms.

So, the BBC should go out with a bang as the exclusive UK broadcaster of the Olympic Games, and give us the full London 2012 experience again later this year for Rio. Every event, real time, HD or SD via Dsat and Dcable. Not, 'hide' it all on the BBC Sport website, or the BBC Sport connected tv app.

Thing about the IOC deal is, that they could have taken the Discovery Networks cash, and boarded up the pan-European rights behind the Eurosport paywall, and relegated the PSB's to a couple of hours highlights per night - but they didn't.
They allowed Eurosport to sub-licence the rights for live/delayed/highlights back to PSB's. Yes, it's not the same as wall to wall live coverage, and it'll be interesting to see which events you will have to watch via Eurosport Olympics, and which via BBC One, but until that is thrashed out, no-one knows.

The nightmare scenario would of course be the track and field, aquatic, and cycling events all live and exclusive on Eurosport 1 or 2, and Dan Walker having to big up the Shooting, Archery and Greko-Roman wrestling on BBC One.

Just a little thought; the summer Olympics were last exclusive to the BBC in 1984. ITV shared coverage in 1988 with the BBC, and since 1992, they've been on Eurosport as well as the BBC, with occasions where both were showing the same event at the same time. So if anything, the BBC went out with a bang as the exclusive UK broadcaster of the Olympics 32 years ago.

@Hatton - think it's pretty clear that BBC can show what they want to within those two simultaneous streams, but cannot show additional feeds apart from that.

@Brekkie - the way it's worded makes it seem like this new regime kicks in from 2018. It's a shame, but I guess that was a way of driving the cost down for the BBC in this deal with Discovery - i.e. it gives them content as part of the payment for the 2022/24 games as well as just money. I think it's a disgrace that the IOC went down the pay-TV road in a pan-Europe deal that gave the PSBs no entry to the market for exclusive rights, but that's where we are and I don't think we can blame the BBC *at all* for this situation. It is such a shame, though, it really is.

I agree it is the IOC I am most angry with, and then those who should be enforcing the list of protected rights in the UK which to my mind makes this deal at worse illegal, or at best highlight how the last couple of governments have failed to update the list for the digital era. The Eurosport Player being free for the period could be the way around it.

My anger with the BBC is it just seems like such a bad deal - they've given up so much to gain so little. I'm also a bit concerned that it'll be similar to the Australian Open and F1 where in their desperation to hold on to something they've prevented another FTA player coming in and offering much more. It would be interesting to know if ITV would have been happy with just two streams, though in fairness having it on ITV1 and ITV4 would suit their model. Would have been interesting though had there been an open bidding process whether the BBC might have joined up with another broadcaster to keep it free to air.

And a minor aside to this but I'm really doubting now the Commonwealth Games will be on the BBC in 2018.


The 2014-2020 deal was exclusive, so Rio will only be on the BBC.

I think the Olympics is different to both those cases - the BBC give it so much more value and it seems an intrinsically BBC event. I'm not doubting ITV's ability to put on a classy sports production, but it would seem wrong to have ad-breaks during Olympic coverage and there's a particular aesthetic that the BBC give to the coverage that we would miss. And I doubt that ITV would have paid a premium to have extra online streams - the BBC would have been far more likely to do that, given they already have the website infrastructure, etc. I guess the only thing you could say is that the BBC could have kept the 2018 and 2020 games exclusively and then let ITV come in and do the deal with Discovery for 2022 onwards.

But I'll stick my neck out - I don't think that Guardian figure is accurate - I think it's inflated. And this deal is different to the golf and the F1, when the BBC have pulled out of existing deals because of money - they have bartered with Discovery because Discovery have exclusive rights to 2022 and 2024 - and, frankly, I think most of the licence fee payers would rather this deal than the BBC paying more for the 2022 and 2024 rights without chucking in the 2018 and 2020 rights. I'll defend the BBC on this one - it's hard to please everybody and I think they've done the best they could have done. But it's so sad that it's come to this, as they proved that they could negotiate successfully with the IOC for exclusive rights, and only the IOC's ridiculous obsession with their Olympic channel led to the Discovery deal happening in the first place.

Ok so supposing the figure is correct, are we assuming they'll be getting some of that back by sub licensing to Eurosport? I would have thought that were the case.