Paris 2024 promises to break new records for the world’s biggest multi-sport event.
Over 11,000 hours of broadcast content will be produced. Digital engagement, impressions and linear audiences for rights-holding broadcasters will surge given a more favourable time zone. New additions such as skateboarding and surfing will return, having given the Games a much-needed refresh and impetus with a key demographic.
But, when the flame is extinguished, the International Olympic Committee will continue to wrestle with the dilemma of how to retain that audience outside of its magical two-week window every two years.
Even when armed with exclusive multi-platform rights to the Games, some broadcasters struggle to make a return on their rights investment despite stellar audiences. For the IOC, effective monetisation of Olympics content directly remains impossible.
Look no further than the Olympic Channel, a linear and digital OTT platform presented as a 365/24/7 solution that would keep the Olympics relevant year-round. Instead, it became a €490m millstone that failed as a standalone proposition and has instead been migrated into Olympics.com.
According to its business plan, the Channel should have broken even by now. Eight years on from IOC president Thomas Bach hailing it as a “game changer to stay ahead of the curve”, the experiment has shone a light on the inherent weakness of the Olympic digital proposition in between Games.
The IOC spent $109m alone in 2022 on the Olympic Channel and its digital strategy. The fact that the figure represents just shy of three per cent of the IOC’s commercial revenues generated one year prior is evidence that, unlike most other rights-holders, returning a profit from a direct-to-consumer strategy is not the holy grail.
The IOC is continuing to try and ‘own’ its relationship with the fan to drive better digital engagement, but can the content ever be compelling enough for a fragmented viewership awash with entertainment alternatives?
Lightweight portfolio
In recognition of its paucity of content in between Games and the need to ‘stay relevant’, the IOC is attempting to build up a one-stop shop for the Olympic Movement.
Following on from the Youth Olympic Games, the brainchild of former president Jacques Rogge, the Olympic body is now in the early throes of centralising rights to Olympic qualifiers and continues to target the esports sector.
However, this doesn’t translate to week-to-week inventory of substance to lure digital viewers. Centralisation of qualifiers will be a slow burn. Uefa and Fiba’s centralisation processes only worked with the buy-in of all stakeholders.
Nowadays to be only visible 17 days every second year is a low amount for partnerships we sustain. It’s the right thing to do to be more active
– Jérôme Parmentier
Thus far, only BMX freestyle, breaking, skateboarding and sport climbing will feature in the lead-up events to Paris 2024. Such inventory does not offer much scope for additional monetisation and the IOC faces a fight to get more international federations on board.
Much like the arguments around signing up to the Olympic Channel, what will be in it for the federations? Why surrender your own lucrative commercial contracts?
In a first step, 31 events across different disciplines were live streamed on Olympics.com last year mostly on a non-exclusive basis. A combined audience of one million unique users worldwide is evidence of how far the IOC has to go in its bid to engage.
The IOC also remains no closer to solving its quandary of how to tap into esports’ existing audience to ease its out-of-Games engagement problem.
To date, it has steered clear of potentially controversial first-person shooter games, restricting itself to existing Olympic sports as part of its Olympic Virtual Series. As a result, the pilot series registered just 240,000 unique participants.
These are not figures that provide the level of digital traction needed to keep the Olympics front and centre outside of Games time. “I see this as a journey…it’s a matter of staying relevant at the time you do it,” says Jérôme Parmentier, the IOC’s vice-president of broadcast and media rights. “Continue to respond to what you feel is right for your brand and what your partners expect from you. Nowadays to be only visible 17 days every second year is a low amount for the partnerships we sustain. We feel it’s the right thing to do to be more active.”
Owning the fan relationship
The IOC’s acknowledgement of the need to ‘own’ the relationship with its customers does solve one of its historic structural impediments to digital cut-through.
It has consolidated its assets into one direct-to-consumer platform as a destination in and out of Games time, providing video content, results and medal tables. This replaced the previous short-sighted structure of local organising committees constructing their own platforms and losing all registered fans and their data.
Fantasy games and e-commerce are now built in to try and further solidify a direct relationship with the fan.
Claude Ruibal, previously global head of sports content at YouTube, says: “I always felt the IOC should do this themselves to capture the userbase, then leverage that relationship through the Olympic Channel in between the Games to provide consumer touchpoints through behind-the-scenes offerings and influencers.
“They need to ‘own’ their fans and build ongoing relationships but until now they haven’t had the tools.”
The growth of third-party platforms such as Twitch is also starting to feature in the IOC’s plans, though the Olympics’ relationship with influencers and streamers remains in its infancy.
The IOC has taken its first step for Paris 2024, granting digital rights in Brazil to leading live streamer Casimiro via the LiveMode agency. The deal follows on from Casimiro and LiveMode’s streams of the Fifa World Cup last year, which broke several livestreaming viewership records.
Access all areas?
The IOC describes the raison d’être of Olympics.com as a provider of engagement opportunities, original content and Olympic communications. Amalgamating the digital properties has pushed Olympics.com past 8 million monthly unique users and 110 million followers on social media.
By the time of the Paris closing ceremony, the IOC will be better equipped to convert more of the Games digital traffic. But is the content compelling enough?
The Olympic Channel’s in-house documentaries, archive footage and niche live sports failed to turn the dial. Faced with such restrictions around premium live sports content it can showcase, the documentary space will be one that the IOC needs to command its fair share of.
There are early signs of a change in tactics. ‘The Redeem Team’ documentary on the US men’s basketball team’s pursuit of gold at Beijing 2008 is to be the first of several “collaborative” projects with Netflix. Licensing content to the entertainment behemoth could unlock not insignificant sums. But don’t expect unfettered access in documentaries. For Ruibal, the IOC’s failure to provide all-access footage during the Games – be it their own or for third parties – remains “a bit of a miss”.
Stringent social media rules have been slightly relaxed, but the IOC still precludes its athletes from sharing video footage from the ‘Field of Play’, ‘Back of House’ accredited areas or doping control stations. Paris 2024 will potentially represent the start of a shift with Olympic Broadcasting Services promising more behind-the-scenes material and athlete-focused features during the Games.
How far the IOC is willing to go in loosening restrictions or control over content will be key to its digital penetration. Akin to the complexities around the Olympic Qualifier Series and esports, the IOC has been unable to go ‘all in’ on all-access documentaries and gain the traction enjoyed by the likes of Formula 1.
“Global reach on global platforms helps gets the Olympics in people’s minds, but it has to help the journey to the Games and the audience of our broadcasters by warming up the audience for stories that are going to happen at the Olympic Games”, notes Parmentier.
Ceding some control over how those “journeys” to future Games are portrayed will be crucial in retaining a digital relationship with viewers beyond the two biennial flashes.
Herein lies the IOC’s engagement dilemma.
The numbers around consumption of the Games are not in question and continue to underpin the rights fee revenue that feeds the Olympic Movement.
Roll back eight years and the Olympic Channel was not widely viewed as a digital gamechanger for the Olympics, but as a well-intentioned hobby horse of Bach – an idea first proposed in 1994 during a fully linear era.
As one leading media rights executive involved in the Olympic space says: “That whole political vision is being slowly brought to a dead end. They are replacing it with other types of content initiatives that will keep the Olympic conversation of current relevance going.”
The Olympics has stood at the forefront of global sport for more than a century, but there is more competition than ever for people’s attention. If the Games is to remain the world’s most important sports event, the IOC will need to get bolder and embrace content that drives real consumption.
