The high speed internet has allowed sporting events to be viewed online by just about anyone in the world. Always up for embracing technology, the Olympics have become big business for online viewers. Except, for in the US.
Yesterday I was reading an article on the history of Olympic television
coverage. As some might know, the 1932 Olympics was the first television
program to ever be broadcast using satellites. It wasn’t until the
1960’s when United States viewers started getting live coverage of the
games. In the 1990’s, CBS started using additional cable outlet’s to
give viewers more viewing opportunities for their winter Olympic
broadcasts. Then in 2004, NBC took the next step and expended their
coverage even more with 24 hour-a-day coverage on their family of cable
networks. Now, in 2010, coverage has again expanded thanks to high speed
satellite internet as many of the events are now being
streamed live on the internet.
For the Olympics, this seemed like the next logical step. For as much as
the Olympic movement is steeped in tradition and aren’t as open to
change as some might want it to be, they do love to update
technologically. The Olympics is big money and the IOC makes a lot of it
selling broadcasting rights for their games. While NBC, the primary
broadcaster for the games and the exclusive US broadcaster, utilizes
highlights on their NBCOlympics.com website, they keep their live
broadcasting for their afternoon and prime time coverage, which gets big
numbers for their advertisers. For Olympic lovers it has always been a
complaint that they rarely get to see full coverage of events. NBC
focuses almost exclusively on US competitors and usually focus on just
their performances.
While NBC is slowly learning how to utilize the internet for their
coverage, other broadcasters, have fully embraced internet broadcast for
the Olympics. CTV, the Canadian broadcaster for the Vancouver games,
are broadcasting all events live on their website. Unfortunately for US
viewers online, the coverage is blacked out for anyone on this side of
the boarder (that is NBC’s doing). The same goes for the European
coverage. The European Union broadcaster allows views in EU countries to
watch most events live online, though they are not available for
viewing in the US.
Next year, the International Olympic Committee will take bids on which
United States network will provide coverage of the summer and winter
Olympic Games beginning in 2014. NBC, FOX and an joint ABC/ ESPN bid are
all in the running to broadcast the next four Olympic games with the
winning network paying over a billion dollars for the privilege. Whether
or not the next broadcaster will incorporate internet coverage into
their package is yet to be seen, but chances are as the net becomes more
relevant in live broadcasts, we will see more live streaming Olympic
coverage in the United States.
