Winter Olympics 2018

Swear it didn't say "Summer and Winter" at the time I sarcasticly replied, but heck its been a long week.

The BBC will get away with it for the Winter Olympics but they'll be caught out with the summer games when multiple medal events can happen simultaneously and an audience that has been used to being able to watch multiple events since 2002/2004 and all televised events since 2012 find they are limited to two streams, and the BBC are never going to be able to please everyone.

Here is the OFCOM Code for people to interpret for themselves.

My argument comes from 1.3, 1.7 and 1.12 plus Annex 1 but other clauses, specifically 1.10, counteract it.

How would OFCOM rule on an event that has never been shown that’s never been shown in its entirety? If this situation is such a major breach of the code why have they been so silent on it? Perhaps you should make w complaint to them to see how they rule on it?

Again, even in 2012 there were some events (just not many) that the BBC didn’t show that were available to them*. So if - as you appear to be saying - the BBC must show every moment of every event then they’ve been in breach since the code came into place in the 1990s.

What percentage of the viewing public chose the BBC 1 or BBC 4 coverage last year? What difference will they notice from this Olympics on?

And, again, most crucially - how would you have handled the situation differently and ensured the level of coverage that FTA viewers will get of 2022 and 2024? Not in a fantasy word but faced with the reality of the IOC and Discovery doing the deal with no counter bids considered.

*I was in the IBC in 2012 and 2016 so know this for sure. It wasn’t many events - some simultaneous tennis matches were one example - but not quite everything was shown.

I think parking the Winters in this discussion is probably a good idea. The audiences for them are relatively small and the BBC has never gone 'all out' on them.

However the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympic Games will be the time when the audience really does notice the changes.

Only one proper TV channel will be carrying shows - not two (so BBC Four won't need to be re-engineered to run 24 hours I guess - as all the Olympic TV content will presumably be on BBC One OR BBC Two - but not at the same time. I wonder if Discovery/Eurosport/IOC will allow handover simulcast windows - I suspect they will)

Then one Digital (i.e. Red Button / Streaming) channel for coverage of a second event. And that's it...

I think the lack of being able to watch the events you want to watch, uninterrupted will be significant, as no doubt both TV and Digital streams will be editorially driven and skewed to 'big hitters', with minor competitors in minor sports participation, or full coverage of events without interruption, only available via a Discovery/Eurosport subscriptions.

Given that Red Button streams were getting healthy viewing figures in the BARB ratings during 2012 - I think the public were very aware of them.

Thought this worth putting separately. I was fond of the BBC long before I worked for it, and I’ve been a fan of the Olympics since I was very young. We’ve been incredibly fortunate in the coverage we have got from the BBC over the years and the way it’s grown. There are arguments to be had about the level of ‘chat’ (which I’d argue is more about telling the stories and giving background / context) and live action but look at how it compares to what is offered elsewhere.

I was fortunate enough to be in the IBC (and sometimes elsewhere) in 2012 and 2016. I had access to the 40+ OBS distribution feeds. Olympic geek heaven. It wasn’t my job to be editorially aware, to keep up to speed with who was winning what- with a focus (like a lot of the audience) on Team GB, but it helped my work to do so and I wanted to.

The best way to do that was to keep an eye on the main BBC 1 coverage, perhaps with BBC 4 output on as well. There were times when the dedicated event feeds were necessary but nowhere near as much as you’d think - if there was a major British interest or other big event / story you’d see it live and if they were live on something else at the time it’d be on BBC 4 and / or you’d see as soon as the other event had finished. You may not see all the competitors go in the canoe slalom, but you’d be there live (or as close to live as possible) for the vital moments. That is thanks to some brilliant minds behind the scenes making very careful decisions, being flexible with plans, a technical setup and staff who can make this possible and those on air who can handle this.
An event of the scale of the Olympics shows how important ‘authored’ coverage is for a mainstream audience.

And that core coverage is what the vast vast majority of the audience watched and will continue to be able to watch- the ‘best of’ everything that is going on, not switching to a dedicated event feed for fear of missing something exciting elsewhere. Of course - as a BBC employee and an Olympics fan - I’d prefer it to have stayed as it was and see how the BBC could have developed the multiple online feeds but the Discovery deal prevented that.

Once that deal was done the BBCs priority had to be ensuring the coverage that most people watched would continue. Compare it to the deals that have been done with broadcasters in other countries - many restricting the amount of coverage in terms of hours on a single channel, some keeping whole events exclusive to pay TV - to see how good the deal is.

Then look at what’s been lost - a great service and one people were starting to use more but the most important part has been saved and isn’t restricted. It is a shame that those who want to follow a particular event from start to finish will now have to pay £10 or £20 to Eurosport and not be able to watch on the same range of devices the BBC Sport app supports. It is a shame that people may not discover events by switching around the online streams. The BBC had worked hard to develop that. The people to blame for that are the IOC. It wasn’t the BBC ‘giving up’, they made the best of the situation they were left with and thought about 2022 and 2024 rather than just 2018 and 2020.

The best deal would have been to give Discovery exclusive pay TV rights but leave the FTA broadcasters alone. In most countries Eurosport would have offered much more dedicated in depth coverage than had previously been available. Sadly the commercial reality to make the deal work probably involves a greater level of exclusivity. And the IOC wanted the money for their ‘Olympic Channel’. That’s where we are and I don’t think we can have expected much more once the deal had been done.

No arguments with any of that - it will be a loss. The majority of viewers will still get what they’ve been watching but some will miss out. I wish it wasn’t that way. What I’m querying is what the BBC could have done differently given it was a done deal and comparing to what other countries FTA broadcasters have ended up with.

I wouldn't quibble either. The BBC have got a much better deal than many public service broadcasters in Europe.

I did when it was announced, complaining to OFCOM, the DCMS and the BBC. Of the three the BBC took the complaint most seriously with me getting a response from the DGs office (supposedly) very quickly. Can't quite recall the defence but clearly the deal wasn't ripped up in response to any of my complaints. It does wind me up when you get all these stupid articles claiming "FIX" or "OUTRAGE" when there is no such thing about some non-event yet a major and questionable change in the broadcasting of the premier sporting event goes unchallenged.


It isn't about showing it in its entirity, its about being able to. The World Cup, Euros and Olympics are all on that list and they'd be outrage if the football games were not all FTA, even if all the home nation games, the final, semi finals and a significant number of first choice games theoughout the competition remained FTA. Viewers always had the opportunity to watch all the matches FTA if they so wish over the last 20+ years, and the same has applied to most broadcast Olympic events since 2002 as well.

No doubt you are correct there but I would say having everything available to the audience has made that job easier for them so on the rare occassion they couldn't cover everything they may have wanted to on one or two primary channels, at least it was there on the red button for those who wanted to see the event as it unfolded.


The new format is basically going back 20 years, but with the disadvantage that unlike then the BBC can't exactly keep it secret what else is going on thanks to social media and a rival broadcaster, so playing out content later isn't as easy. And yes, they may drop in live to events for the crucial moments, but the story of how that moment is achieved will be lost and popular team sports like hockey and rugby sevens won't be able to get the long extended coverage they used to have and more importantly the minority sports which might not make it to BBC1/2/4 coverage won't be available to kids who interesting in them now for their flagship event, and often their only real exposure in four years.


I do think the BBC got a pretty poor deal considering what they gave up from 2018/20 and what they got in return - plus spending £100m+ in the process. Regardless of UK law the IOC/Eurosport deal required FTA coverage anyway so 2022/24 FTA coverage was assured - whether on the BBC or elsewhere. Easy to say when you've not been in the negotiations but on the surface the BBC deal looks poor - not so bad for the Winter Olympics but for the summer games they really should have pushed for more streams, even if it's just one more. And the BBC striking such a deal to "save" the Olympics will do them no favours - they'll just get the flack for coverage being well below what it was previously, just as they did when the F1 deal was struck.


What really grates on me though is how much poorer Eurosport has got in the UK since they acquired these rights. At the time they got them they had been rolling out their Eurosport Player on multiple platforms and it was a pretty decent service, but over the last couple of years it's been withdrawn from a number of platforms (or in many cases, left there but just stopped working, with zero response to complaints from Eurosport) whilst the revamped app/browser version is one of the worst online players I've seen for useability and it regularly fails. I know during the US Open more often than not when I went to use it I was unable too.

At least you won't have that problem from next year..... you can complain to Amazon instead*, along with everyone else who wants to try and watch it!


(*Should you be a customer of whatever package they decide to include it with)

Eurosport will still have two of the grand slams and some other tennis coverage throughout the year.

Amazon will include it with Prime Video.

Good point Brekkie about Eurosport.

During the Olympics minus their on-line streams, in the UK, you'll have the BBC (+1RB) and Eurosport 1&2 (via Dsat) so 4 channels and err that's it. So the chances of Eurosport 1 and BBC 1/2 showing exactly the same events at the same time, will be fairly high.

Unless as part of the sell on deal to the BBC there is some 'non competition clause' meaning the BBC can't show what Eurosport 1 UK feed and vis versa, but for a Team GB Gold medal chance, that would look bad for both broadcasters.

I hope Eurosport buy additional space for Olympic extra channels for television distribution, because as Brekkie has said there on line offering is dreadful. It's tied to much to computer viewing, no effort to get Eurosport player onto more models of connected TV, or streaming stick devices.

I'd like to watch the track cycling and archery via my tv - happy to pay extra for it via connected or streaming device, but not by having to log on to my pc and watch it.

It's worth pointing out that even those 40-odd feeds don't carry everything, so even if the BBC gave out raw access to them, they still wouldn't be broadcasting "every minute" of the games.

Notably, one of the normal missing parts is sailing, with only about ¼ of the races broadcast (more have PSC highlights edited up daily), and the Beeb took advantage of the British interest and that they were the host broadcasters for OBS to take parts of some of the other races live to go along side the OBS coverage. (In Rio they only had a (voice only) reporter and a graphics feed from those other races)