Digital, Local, Personal: Discovery Outlines Grand Plan for Tokyo Olympic Games Broadcast Coverage

Digital, local, personal: Discovery outlines grand plan for Tokyo Olympic Games broadcast coverage By Heather McLean, Editor

Friday, July 16, 2021 - 11:55

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Discovery is set to bring the Tokyo Olympics to Europe from its new-look Cube

Discovery has outlined its European broadcast plans for the Tokyo Olympics, which marks its first ever Summer Games for the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

From its linear channels including Eurosport, to a personalised experience on Discovery Plus, social media offerings and the new enhanced Cube read more about the Cube here the broadcaster is hoping to make this the most viewed Summer Olympics in Europe, ever.

Andrew Georgiou, president of sports at Discovery, states: The IOC and the organising committee in Japan and the Japanese people have had a really long journey, but we're at the doorstep of the world's biggest event. And we're really excited; the athletes have been preparing, they've been training, the athletes are ready, the venues are ready and we're ready.

The Olympics provides an awesome canvas to tell some great stories and we don't know what those stories are going to be yet, and that's part of the excitement. We're certainly planning to tell those stories and we have a great opportunity to do so, he says.

All Discovery content will be available across a number of channels, from linear TV to Discovery Plus for a personalised experience, a UHD channel, and social media. British cycling champion and on-screen talent, Bradley Wiggins is shown here in the Cube using its new analytics powers

Bold ambition

We definitely want to make sure that these Summer Games are viewed by more people across Europe than any Summer Games in history, continues Georgiou. That's a bold ambition and I think we're going to achieve that, and one of the reasons we can achieve that is because we've got a really big breadth of coverage and Discovery's coverage of the games, in addition to all the local national broadcasters, means Discovery, Discovery Plus, and Eurosport are the only places right across Europe where you can watch every unmissable moment and that's going to make us a real destination.

It means that people can see it across all of our digital platforms. That means they can see it when they want, they can watch it where they want, on any device they want. And that's a Discovery selling point for sure, he says.

We'll be using all of our platforms, both paid, owned and operated platforms, to point people to Discovery Plus as being the best place to enjoy the Olympics, because it will be the only place in each of those markets where you'll be able to get everything

As to the challenges of the current global pandemic situation, and the fact the Japanese government recently announced a state of crisis in the country, Scott Young, Discovery's senior vice president of content and production who spoke to SVG Europe from the IOC IBC in Tokyo, says: That's a huge complexity that we're dealing with and we're dealing with the changes of that every day. Every day we sit down with OBS and the other key broadcasters that are here and work through the changes that are still unfolding in front of us.

Georgiou states: Discovery is pretty excited about the games, our first summer Olympics. We're really looking forward to it. We thought we were going to do it last year, of course, but we're excited. There's been loads of challenges in terms of getting people on the ground, and we've certainly adjusted our production plans in terms of meeting some of the hurdles and some of those challenges, and being respectful of the folks in Japan as well. So there's been lots to do despite having an extra 12 months to do it, because kind of everything has changed. It's difficult to know what to expect.

I'm leaving on Saturday for Tokyo so I'm fascinated to see what it's going to be like on the ground during a quite unique Olympic moment.

The new-look Discovery Cube is set to blow minds, from incorporating the weather in Tokyo that day, to showing the spectacular Tokyo skyline, and following the Japanese clock with night to day effects

Storytelling expertise

On how Discovery is going to attract those viewers, Young comments: It comes down to storytelling. We're here for the athlete's journey and we want to live every moment of that. To do that we've amassed the most impressive broadcasting team I've seen; we've got over 150 talented presenters and athletes and experts; that's totalling 198 Olympic appearances, 84 medals in total, 30 of those gold.

So that's an extraordinary amount of depth and breadth of we're going to bring you across our markets, Young continues. That's topped up with 400 commentators who be commentating just over 6,300 sessions, so you won't miss the Olympics across what we're doing and we've got teams out in venues, beaming back into their home base here in Tokyo, that then is fed directly back into their markets back at home. So our content is going to be immersive and the storytelling is going to be magnificent.

Young comments on the size of Discovery's operation from Japan to Europe: The scale of our project is enormous, not just in what we're doing here in Tokyo, but how we broadcast back across Europe. Traditionally, our content is seen by about 130 million people each month. We have our linear channels, we've got our subscription channels, we've also got our Discovery Plus channels and .com channels and the Eurosport Player.

How we send content around our platforms and our market across Europe is unlike any other broadcaster, Young continues. We are the most complex sports broadcaster in the world, and we have 50 marke

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