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

The Guardian, whilst the The Telegraph say £100m.

Taking £100m as what the BBC paid Discovery, and what the BBC sub licensed to Discovery for 2018 & 2020 was worth say £40m. The Summer games are much more appealing to a mainstream UK audience than the Winter games, so split £140m into 80% for Summer and 20% Winter. That makes two Summer games cost £112m and two Winter games cost £28m. That leaves us with

Tokyo 2020 & (probably) Paris / LA 2024 at £56m each
PyeongChang 2018 & 2022 at £14m each

An Ofcom document says London 2012 rights had cost the BBC £71m - but they won those before it was known London would be the host city, and for a long while during that bidding process London wasn't the favourite. Had they been awarded after July 2005 then they'd almost certainly have cost a lot more. The BBC rights for 2012 were exclusive (show as many streams as they wanted to) so its possible to argue that the new deal means they've paid a lot for non-exclusive rights, but what they have got what is by far the most valuable part. It also still represents very good value for money when compared to other sports rights.

Assuming the reported details are correct - in that the BBC can show two live channels of whatever they want, replay anything else not shown live without delay - then they've got what the vast majority of the audience will have watched anyway. I'm sure I remember reading that multiple streams at London 2012 were very popular, but one (and possibly both) Summer games won't be in 'UK friendly' time zones. For Tokyo they could have replayed many events in full on multiple streams (or on demand) during the (UK) afternoon and evening but by that point even some of those who'd have watched full live streams will be happy with extended highlights. My initial worry was that the BBC were limited in how much they could show, that doesn't seem to be the case. It'll be tricky at certain 'peak' times during the Olympic schedule and long form and minority sports will suffer more, but what at least 90% of the audience would have watched is still going to be there.

I don't understand what else the BBC were meant to do or how you could criticise them- beyond saying they shouldn't have used their 2018 & 2020 rights as part of the deal- maybe it was something Discovery insisted on. After all they already had the rights to the whole of Europe from 2018 apart from the UK & France- by insisting a share of those rights as part of any deal for 2022 & 2024 then it tidies that up that anomaly for them. I don't believe Discovery would have sold any more rights to ITV, maybe ITV would even have accepted less. I'm sure if they'd offered more than the BBC then Discovery would have been very happy to do a deal with them and the Guardian were reporting they'd bid very strongly for the sub-license deal. Discovery aren't the same as a large marketing agency buying up the rights, they're in it to build their own position in the broadcast market (through Eurosport). So they need to have something significant to sell themselves- the best thing is to target those who want to be able to access any Olympic event live.

Neither can you criticise the BBC for not bidding for exclusive rights because they simply weren't given the chance- either through the EBU (as for 2012 and before) or directly with the IOCs marketers (for 2014 onwards). As others have said here, the blame lies squarely with the IOC for putting their 'Olympic TV channel' before FTA access to the games. (Worth noting that it in some countries- Italy I think is one- there was already a pay TV deal in place with FTA coverage limited to 200 hours for the Summer games, 100 for the Winter. At least we haven't got that.)

How much presence does the BBC normally have at the Olympics in both man power and set design/on air talent?

I can only remember the Sochi Olympics and it seemed like their presence based on pictures was pretty sparce - with just one studio. I'd venture a guess their will be a decent on the ground effort this year for Sochi given the advances in technology. A lot of things can be done over IP now with faster fiber cables.

Of course there still be the elephant in the room with NBC (MSNBC, CNBC and likely E! News) where in the past they likely had two studios devoted to sports, an open air studio for Today (that I believe dates back to 2000) and multiple standup locations (I think in London they used stacked shipping containers )for their affiliates and station groups to use. In 2014 I believe some programming / control rooms were based in Sochi and Stamford, CT. I believe NBC in Stanford edited may of their high lights on site which were distributed via the web and programming back to Sochi for broadcast.

It's irrelevant to compare what the US broadcasters will be doing. Their prime function is to edit out of the coverage everyone except the American competitors, and fit what's left around commercial breaks.

The media here often complain about BBC 'overmanning', they seem to ignore the enormous circus that arrives from the US, complete with mobile Starbucks cafes.

Just saying.

If you work as a journalist on certain newspapers the answer is far too many who are all sent abroad for a 'holiday' or 'jolly' at license fee payers expense and who do little or no work whilst they are there.


In man power terms for an overseas Olympics there were some figures quoted for Beijing:

BBC: 450
ARD / ZDF: 800
NBC: 3000

NBC quoted a similar figure for London and had a space in the IBC several times as big as anyone else. I suspect the BBC may have had more people in London, I suspect for Rio it'll be less than Bejing with more production done in Salford.


It always would be for a Winter Olympics, but don't forget the Sochi Trolly http://tvnewsroom.org/bbc-sport/sochi-2014-bbcs-technical-shopping-trolley-video-63704/


The stacked shipping containers in London were for various international broadcasters who wanted a studio with a backdrop of the park (the BBC used something similar in Sochi). NBCs studio was in the IBC. Outside of NBC network the coverage was hosted from New York, I don't believe the affiliates got a look in for facilities / studios in the park. Today was hosted from a studio in the park- and I read for Beijing the cameras for that were individually fed back to New York on fibre, so would guess London was similar.

[edit: UKNews got there first. Though I think I met him in the BBC area of the IBC at one point, so also knows what he's talking about ]

The BBC's presence on the ground in London was (understandably, for a home games), massive. Obviously not quite NBC massive - but their main on-air studios were in pretty much the middle of the park, with a better view than the IOC shipping containers to the south. They also had two studio facilities 'outside the fence' for their news operation, and relocated the News Channel and World News there for the best part of a month.
That's on top of fairly prime positions in the venues - the stadium and Velodrome pres points were really good too.

See TVNewsroom for pics of Studio 1 and Studio 2.

This was, I guess, a first foray into remote studios for the Beeb: during Breakfast, each of the cameras were fibred up to Salford, where the regular gallery cut the programme. That's nothing on NBC, who did all their vision mixing in New York.

Just a small addition / correction:

The £71m comes from an Ofcom document estimating the BBC paid 25% of the EBU rights deal that included 2012. On that basis the BBC should have paid £250m for 2018-2014 if the reported £1bn value of the Discovery deal is correct.

Complicating this is a Guardian report estimating the BBCs 2014 - 2020 deal as being worth £60m and that it was a 'modest' increase on what they were already paying, which means either the Ofcom figure for 2012 is too high (it seems that way to me) or the Guardian figure is too low (could also be the case).

So if the Ofcom figure is right and the Guardian wrong then the BBC have done well from the deal.

If the Guardian figure is right and the Ofcom figure is wrong then the BBC have - in effect - paid a huge amount for 2022 and 2024 and offset it slightly by sharing 2018 & 2020.

If the truth is somewhere in the middle then the BBC have done OK under the circumstances to keep the rights they have.

So.... as you were

Just a shame their coverage so was dreadful and panned for the resources involved!

Yet they pay the most for the event so the IOC usually give them a gold medal for their coverage anyway.

Although it wouldn't be ideal I'm not against a commercial broadcaster holding the rights, and indeed if Eurosport was free to air at least for the period they'd probably be the best option for it. However it is all about the type of ads and the placement of ads - some sports suit commercial TV better than others, and indeed some arguably benefit from it.

The main problem with the BBC deal is that two streams just isn't sufficient to provide even the most basic of coverage as anyone who watched London 2012 on Freeview can tell you. If it was two for the Winter Games and at least 4 (but ideally 6) for the summer games then that would probably be a worthwhile compromise, but having two streams for the Olympics is the equivalent of cutting Match of the Day down to five minutes IMO.

Coverage that was so brilliant, loads of Americans used VPNs so they could watch the BBC's streams instead!

From what I remember at the time, complaints seemed to be they hardly showed anything live, what they did show was hours later after everyone already knew the results, the show was full of studio talk and interviews, cut out chunks of the opening and closing ceremonies, pretty much acted as if no country but the US was competing and I remember people complaining about half of one evening's coverage being filled with a film rather than games coverage.

Yes - big complaint was lack of live coverage on any coast, even when events were happening at times that would be compatible with an East Coast or West Coast audience (but possibly not in the desired timeslot to maximise advertising revenue...)

The Americans who VPNed in were amazed at the provision of 24 streams of live, uninterrupted event coverage. But obviously they weren't paying the licence fee that funded them in place of the commercials that funded (and interrupted) their domestic coverage and forced it to be timeshifted to maximise the revenue returned on such a stratospheric rights deal...

So, basically, NBC spent so much money on getting the rights they felt they had to butcher it the way they did to stand a chance of getting the money back.

Unless I'm mistaken, wasn't the US pretty much the only country where even the men's 100m final wasn't shown live?

They may (or may not) have shown that live but certainly the ceremonies weren't live and our evening events weren't live as standard - it's all delayed for primetime. Like the BBC though NBC viewers with cable subscriptions could access every event live online with the exception of the ceremonies (though I think they relented on the closing ceremony in Sochi).

Not on the same scale at all of course but any confirmation of coverage of the Youth Winter Olympics which begin in Lillehammer next Friday. I'm guessing it'll be the 30-minute IOC produced highlights show on the red button, but surely it wouldn't be too much for them to find a slot on CBBC for it - or even fill half an hour a day on BBC2.