IBC 2026: Olympic Broadcasting Services to Receive International Honour for Excellence

IBC has announced that Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) will receive the International Honour for Excellence (IHFE) at IBC2026, taking place September 11-14 at the RAI Amsterdam. The award recognizes OBS's contributions to live sports production and broadcasting.

We are truly honoured to receive this award and sincerely thank IBC for this recognition. This distinction is a tribute to the passion, expertise and dedication of everyone at Olympic Broadcasting Services, whose work enables us to bring the Olympic Games to audiences around the world. It recognises our team's commitment to innovation, excellence and service to the Olympic Movement, as we continually seek new ways to enhance the coverage and audience experience of the Games. We are especially proud to receive this award from IBC, whose role in bringing together the international broadcast community is so highly regarded, says Yiannis Exarchos, Chief Executive Officer, OBS.

OBS previously received the IBC2024 Innovation Award for Content Creation for its live broadcast of the Paris 2024 Opening Ceremony, which used more than 200 smartphones contributing video and a sea-based 5G network for Olympic sailing competitions in Marseille.

IBC also announced the Best Technical Paper award will go to Emma Maier, Jodie Pearton, Anna Stewart, Arina Mnatsakanyan, and Jonathan Freeman of i2 media research for Measuring and Reducing Interaction Barriers in Internet-Delivered TV Systems Through Age-Informed Human Factors Design. The paper identifies how design barriers including a lack of hierarchy, layered menus, unclear feedback, and unfamiliar terminology can make internet-delivered TV harder to navigate for older viewers, and demonstrates how an optional age-informed overlay interface can reduce those barriers. The research used observational testing with adults aged 65-89 at the i2 media research lab at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Among many excellent papers in this year's IBC Technical Conference, this paper on how to make TV more usable for older viewers clearly reports a well-conceived and executed scientific study, says Andrew Dumbreck, Chair of the IBC2026 Technical Papers Committee. It is highly relevant to the current thinking about how to transition to greater delivery of content by internet while retaining public service goals of universal coverage and access. We can also look forward to a diversity of top-quality papers from the broadcast industry and academia including from: BBC, UK; NHK, Japan; RAI, Italy; and RT , Ireland.

Both awards will be presented at the IBC Innovation Awards event on Sunday, September 13.

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2026/08/13/ibc-2026-olympic-broadcasting-s...
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