Winter Olympics 2018

This is slightly tangential, but something I've been wondering about for a while. The IOC has always been very strong in pushing the Olympics as a competition among individuals, and trying to take the focus off countries competing with one another.

That's the complete antithesis of modern coverage of Olympic Games - to the extent that, in the UK, "Team GB" is now a brand in its own right.

Is this something the IOC just accepts and sort of goes along with? Or do they try and influence broadcasters to cover events in a particular way? Would the broadcast rights have clauses around this sort of thing, in the same way that the Charter says that athlete names must be more prominent than their countries in stadium displays?

I'm not sure that they necessarily will - thanks to the time zones, most events will be on overnight. Yes, you may get some dressage fans upset they can't watch a heat at 4am because there's live coverage of cycling, but in reality won't most people be watching highlights in the evening?
I don't think football tournaments are really a fair comparison - they tend to only have two simultaneous events. I think the busiest day of London 2012 had 24 events on at once - making all of those available FTA is commercially a big ask, and the BBC were only able to do it because it was a home games.

I’m certain that when the deal was BBC / Discovery deal was announced it was reported there were no restrictions on what the BBC could show when or how many hours (making it quite different from many of the other FTA deals Discovery has done), just that it was one linear channel and one ‘red button’ stream and that any video shown online had to come from either of those (live streamed or cut for highlights). So yes there is bound to be duplication of coverage but they’ll be aiming at different audiences.


On a slightly related note - in Brazil last year the rights were spread between multiple broadcasters (at least four or five) - often they’d end up showing exactly the same thing. Some of them (especially the cable sports channels) had second channels, but they weren’t always showing Olympic coverage. One of them (SportTV) did have about 16 channels of Olympics though, but finding the event you wanted could take time!

For the Winters this may well be the case in the UK. I wouldn't assume anything about what Discovery/Eurosport do for the Summer games - either in the UK or across Europe...



Don't believe that to be the case, I think the BBC can show anything they like live on their streams. Not sure about the precise rules for highlights.

Yep - also notable because I believe the BBC Sport Olympics coverage of the sailing was the one bit of non-OBS coverage that was an indie not in-house I believe? I think Sunset and Vine produced it?

If anyone else is looking for the original discussion from 2015 on Eurosport getting the Olympics rights, here's the thread: https://tvforum.uk/tvhome/discovery-sign-paneuropean-olympics-rights-2022-40878/#

I couldn't find it using either forum search or Google search, nor is it tagged. I had to go through Brekkie's post history because I knew he would have posted about it!

I wouldn't wish that on anybody!


The search here seems to be well and truly broke but via Google here is the thread where the BBC sublicencing deal was announced:

https://tvforum.uk/tvhome/olympics-update-remain-bbc-2024-41391/

I'm a bit angrier in that thread and stand by it!

It's a difficult one, because Eurosport had to get one of the big four on board to comply with the law, so you could argue that the BBC could have demanded more but if they had could they have risked losing the event to a rival who would have covered it with commericials?

Is the BBC only being able to show one thing at once on a qualifying channel, in line with the legislation?

Those who argue that BBC saved this from being pay TV only though are clearly perpetrating a fallacy.

ITV under Adam Crozier made a very competitive offer to Eurosport early on so this clearly cut the BBC's leverage in negotiations.



Don't think anyone has argued that, the contract the BBC has negotiated is miles ahead of what most European free to air broadcasters have negotiated or will get.
The price? Giving up exclusive coverage for the next 2 games.

The advantage the BBC has though over ITV in striking a deal with Eurosport is they're not a commercial competitor. Eurosport would have a much tougher task selling ad space in the games when advertisers can go to ITV instead.

I’m not so sure - they’d each have been targeting quite different audiences so those buying ad space would have been different. I’m sure it was said that around 10 - 15% of Sky’s income was advertising and sponsorship. As a ‘basic’ channel Eurosport’s figure would be higher, but subscription revenue will still be a signifying part of their income.


What would have happened is FTA viewers would have got inferior coverage given that the amount ITV would have had to pay would mean filling as many minutes as OFCOM would allow with ads. Would they have been able to negotiate a deal that didn’t include a limit on the number of hours and / or no extra online stream? (Would they have minded a limit so they could fit other programmes in?) Fortunately we don’t need to find out what the answers would have been.

What a timely question - as the IOC have just banned Russia from the 2018 Olympics, but Russian sportspeople could compete.

- https://www.channel4.com/news/russia-banned-from-2018-winter-olympics

Probably the biggest story of these Games, coming after doping relevations in 2016.

Marketing experts might like to tear their hair out at this poorly-phrased message, worn on athletes' T-shirts... They're pro-Russia, but their clothes say NO RUSSIA



Re: SJ's question about the IOC and national bias on TV - I've no idea if they make particular demands to stop it, but any channel could then just point to NBC, who are apparently pretty chauvinist in their pro-U.S. coverage.

Does anyone know of any Olympic guidelines about that?