Milano Cortina 2026: OBS CEO Yiannis Exarchos Previews Production InnovationsFirst Person View drones, AI-based tech target greater fan engagement, efficiencyBy Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director Wednesday, January 14, 2026 - 4:15 pm
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Sports fans will benefit from the wealth of tech innovations that Olympic Broadcast Services will deploy during the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Games. For two weeks beginning Feb. 6, OBS will deliver 1,000 hours of event coverage, along with an additional 5,000 hours of content and highlights. The goal of the tech enhancements is to increase fan engagement and production efficiency.
It will begin with what OBS CEO Yiannis Exarchos describes as a particularly interesting Opening Ceremony: given the unique geography of this year's Games, many of the athletes will be located across Italy and not gathered at Milano San Siro Stadium. With the help of technology, he says, the athletes in five separate locations will be connected not only to watch the ceremony but to participate as well.
OBS's Yiannis Exarchos: We are a company that is very technological, full of engineers, full of creative people, and we need to remember that this is about storytelling.
There will be a parade of athletes in every location, and it will be happening concurrently, explains Exarchos. It's orchestrated in a way that everybody will be able to see and participate in what's happening in every venue. This has been a core objective that we had with [Director of Ceremonies] Marco Balich and the creative team: to try to achieve this sense of unity especially in the parade of nations because you will have teams that have athletes in all four locations. We want them to feel that they are parading together at the same time, and we did a very detailed rehearsal a couple of months ago that went very well. Also, there will be core elements of the ceremony everywhere, not just in San Siro.
The connectedness of the Opening Ceremony belies what Exarchos says has been the biggest challenge: the distances between venues, because even the Alpine events have been split into two locations a multi-hour drive apart. Telecom Italia has been a key partner in ensuring connectivity of venues spread across the Dolomites.
The fact that Alpine is split in two geographically very different places is not a huge problem so much for OBS, he says, but it is a challenge for the broadcasters. Alpine events are usually in one space, but now they have to split their operations. This is where connectivity and the cloud and so on will help them. There will be a lot of broadcasters calling Alpine events either from Cortina or from Bormio, but it will appear as if they are present in both places [at once].
Storytelling Is the PointAnd, though focusing on the technical side of production, Exarchos makes clear that the tech is not the point: the athletes, their stories, and their nations are. I try to always remind our team and remind myself that this is not about technology; this is about telling the stories of the most important athletes in the world and telling the stories about the values and the emotions that are being generated by them. he says, noting that the Olympics' ability to bring people together is needed in this time in world history.
We're not tech-narcissists, he adds. We are a company that is very technological, full of engineers, full of creative people, and we need to remember that this is about storytelling.
To that point. he refers to the 3Es that guide OBS efforts: Enablement, doing things that were not possible before; Engagement, making storytelling and coverage exciting and compelling; and Efficiency, making the Games more sustainable, easier, and less wasteful.
Topping the list of new production tools that will enhance engagement are what OBS is calling First Person View Drones. Drones have been a part of OBS efforts since Sochi 2014, but Exarchos says the technology has gotten much safer and will now be much closer to the action. The FPV Drones, for example, will be used at the Sliding Center in Cortina d'Ampezzo, zooming down the course behind the athletes in Bobsled, Luge, and Skeleton competitions. They can go very close to the action, he notes, and offer a sense of being part of the competition.
Also, 360-degree live replays will take another step forward after debuting during the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics. AI powers the new tech and allows stroboscopic coverage, with data related to the athlete's performance developed within seconds instead of minutes.
We will better show the movement of the athlete, but we will also overlay data, which gives completeness to the narrative as it explains the sport and makes the sport more understandable, he adds. It also makes the efforts of the athletes far more impressive.
OBS's new graphics for Curling will show the speed and revolutions (and sweeping frequency), giving viewers greater insight into the sport.
AI technology also is going to play a part in Curling coverage. Debuting this year, a graphic displayed alongside video of the stone sliding down the ice will provide such information as speed and spin rate. Notes Exarchos, It allows the viewer to better understand the technique and also the frequency of the sweeping that members of the team are doing there.
Olympic Channel Services, the OBS sibling that runs the Olympics.com website, will offer a new service that uses AI to answer fans' questions on the competitions, rules, schedules, and more. The service will be available in 12 languages. What's special about it, says Exarchos, is that the source of all this information is not random sourcing from the internet that may contain a lot of mistakes, a lot of inaccuracies. It is framed to provide very accurate, unbiased, checked information around
