Radio Set for Olympic Challenge

Michael Hedges June 1, 2004

In a few short weeks, top athletes and media will converge on Athens, Greece for 2004 Summer Olympic Games.

And as they compete, more than two billion people will tune in to more than 3,500 hours of live coverage.

2004 is certainly a sporting year in Europe. The XXVIII Olympiad, the UEFA Euro 2004 football championships, the Six Nations rugby union contest and more than a thousand other events fill not only diaries of sports fans but also the airwaves.

Big, big business

No other sports broadcasting event compares with the Olympics Games, however. Competition in more than three dozen sports plus opening, closing and awards ceremonies will fill two and a half weeks of August.

Athens Olympic Broadcasting (AOB) is the official host broadcaster, responsible for producing and distributing general radio and television coverage. Rights holding broadcasters will produce their own individualized coverage in co-operation with AOB.

International Sports Broadcasting (ISB) administers all broadcast activities as a concessionaire of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). 

Broadcasting plays a dominant role in the Olympic organizing committees as it does in all major sport events. The first venue completed in Athens and turned over to the ICO was the International Broadcast Centre. Built to accommodate over 10 thousand broadcast personnel from 200 countries, the 40,000 square-meter broadcast complex sits next to the main athletic venue.

Separately, sport and media are big businesses; together, sports media is big, big business, with broadcast rights fees negotiated years in advance for major sport events.

The IOC sells broadcast rights to the major broadcast consortia. The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) negotiated a US$394 million deal on behalf of European public broadcasters for radio and television rights to the Athens Olympic games and the Paraolympic Games.

United States broadcast rights always bring extraordinarily high bids - US broadcaster National Broadcasting Company (NBC) bid $793 million. Rights fees do not, however, include any actual broadcast costs, such as talent, equipment, up-link, down-link, travel expenses or lunch.

Successful bidders for broadcast rights are free to sell specific rights to other broadcasters. For example, Australian broadcast rights for the Athens games went to Seven Network which sold radio rights to Sydney broadcaster 2GB which was then free to sell rights to individual coverage areas.

Inspired branding idea

Although the EBU has negotiated European broadcast rights for the Olympic Games on behalf of its members since 1960, this may change. European Union may rule that rights should be sold on a country-by-country basis and, maybe, unbundled into separate rights for radio, TV, pay-TV and the Internet.

According to the IOC Radio News Access Rules, non-rights holders may not broadcast “Olympic material” nor attend any Olympic event with broadcast equipment.

Olympic venues, competition and ceremony sites and the Olympic village are off limits to all broadcasters but accredited rights holders and strictly policed by the IOC. Commentary and “analogous” coverage, live or delayed, is denied to non-rights holders.

Looking at the figures, the UEFA Euro 2004 football championship is more valuable than the Athens Olympics for European broadcasters. The EBU paid nearly $600 million for total European broadcast rights for, not quite double the fee paid for the Athens Olympics.  Sixteen teams will play 31 matches in Portugal between 12 June and 4 July during the tournament.

French media analyst Alain Neuville likes football but expects the matches to have a greater impact for television advertising. “Radio traditionally benefits more from indirect revenues, like promotions derived from the Olympics or football,” he said.

Media forecaster Zenith Optimedia expects global advertising spending in 2004 to jump by 4.4%, and slightly higher in Europe due to increased buys connected to the major sporting events.

Sports and sports sponsorship offer definite brand-building advantages. European public broadcasters, as official rights holders, creatively exploit this asset even when denied commercial revenue by their founding charters.

To prepare public broadcasters for the Athens Olympics, the EBU presented in November 2002 a seminar on marketing and sports in Athens.

An inspired branding idea from BBC local radio took a page from “Pop Idol,” by inviting sports fans and aspiring broadcasters to compete for the microphone at the Olympic warm-up in Cyprus.

Those interested submit recorded trial commentaries of regional athletic events in the UK. Well-known BBC sports personalities will judge the finalists, and the national champion receives a trip to Athens and a spot in the broadcast booth in Cyprus.

Radio coverage of the Olympic Games and many other sporting events is dwarfed by television, the glowing box in the middle of the room. Many sports, such as synchronized swimming, simply don’t play well on radio.

Others, like races and team sports, are far more compelling with colorful commentaries and descriptions from radio presenters. The picture created is often better than the one shown.

Radio sports journalists, freed from the fixed positions of cameras and sets, can place themselves in the heart of the action and bring that sense directly to their audience.

Radio made its debut at the Paris Olympics in 1924. Angry newspaper reporters forced Radio Paris reporter Raymond Dehorter to leave the Olympic arena. He continued his reports from a dirigible above the stadium.

This year the IOC has further restricted coverage and commentary via the internet or other new technologies. There will be no DAB broadcasts and no instant messages sent to mobile phones.

When the European rights for 2010-2012 were first offered in March, IOC President Jacques Rogge pledged to embrace new technologies with four separate rights packages on offer: TV, radio, mobile platforms and shared fixed memory media.

Previously published in Radio World International, June 2004, in a slightly different form.