Live from Tokyo Olympics: OBS Director of Digital Content Production Matt Millington On Widgets, Athlete Moments, and VR By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Friday, July 30, 2021 - 1:48 am
Print This Story
OBS puts a lot of energy and time into digital fan engagement offerings so what happens when the fans aren't in the stands supporting their nation, and cheering on their friends and family? For OBS it meant filling the gap with a new type of digital experience, one that not only can get virtual fans into the venues but also connect athletes with their friends and families immediately following a competition. Oh, and OBS had to do it quickly.
Matt Millington and the OBS digital team have worked hard to connect athletes with family and friends.
It was a very late project that we basically started working on about four months ago when the announcement was made that international fans would not be allowed into the venues, says Matt Millington, OBS, director of digital content production. So, we started working on three products, two of them are geared towards the fans and one is geared towards the athletes.
The two fan experiences are the Cheer Map and the Fan Video Wall.
They are widgets that can be integrated on any right holder's page or any other partner like federations and national Olympic committees, says Millington. Cheer Map is a widget that allows fans to cheer for their country of choice and while it does default to where the IP is address is based, they can choose another country.
Once in the widget, fans can virtually clap for their favorite nation's athletes.
We have a heat map of the world where you can see bubbles of support for different nations, says Millington. Interestingly, we're getting a lot of traffic from India, a lot from Japan, obviously lot from Australia and we credit that to the time zone. But we have 205 countries or national Olympic committees and all of them have had cheers.
As of July 30, more than 120 million fans had cheered and some also upload a selfie video from their phone or their laptop. Those videos are being placed into a video matrix with 45 fans and those videos are then played out on the big screens at all the venues and made available to rights holders.
It allows fans to virtually be there and the sports presentation teams who control the video scoreboards can utilize both the map and the video, adds Millington.
Athlete Moments
The big addition, however, is the Athlete Moment as it connects athletes with family and friends via video immediately after their competition.
Athletes can celebrate their achievements with friends and family via the OBS Athlete Moment setup. 2021 Olympic Broadcasting Services / Owen Hammon
It's been my favorite part of the project, says Millington. We've set up Athlete Moment viewing stations in selected venues, and we positioned it in a good place right before the mixed zone so it's right in their path.
Millington says there have been some fantastic moments, with the best usually involving a family gathered in a room having a watch party.
It's not the first time that this has been done but definitely the first time at this scale, he says. We have an operations center in Belgium, with a large team who are connecting with families prior to and during the event. And then we link them to the athlete.
Key is making it simple for families at home to use. An athlete signs up to be part of the progam and gets a link that they then share with family and friends.
The family and friends click on that link and are connected to the team in Belgium who tells them what is going to happen and about things like delay, he says.
It also appears to be one of those things born of the pandemic that will stick around.
We think it's here to stay and we haven't been able to cover every venue and every sport but, in the future, that would be our real goal: to cover every sport. But there are some challenges like team sports with 11 or more members. How do you manage that with the time allowed? But we've learned a lot in the last two weeks about how to make the workflow better and what technology works best.
Even the virtual fans could be a keeper.
Clearly the audience within a venue is tiny compared to the worldwide audiences watching on television, says Millington. We'd like to see the technology progress to allow people to not only upload a video, but for us to be able to point to that video so they can get a link some minutes later to the video they are in.
Improvements to the Olympic Video Player
Since the PyeongChang Games in 2018 the OVP has undergone a redesign to not only make it cleaner but to also make the full app available as widgets and modules. Widgets include live sports results, the medals table, the schedule, athlete profiles, and video highlights or interviews. Live video is also available.
We decided to split the OVP into widgets and we've seen huge uptake in those widgets or modules, says Millington. Rights holders can take the live results, the medal count table or schedule as individual widgets. In fact, those three are the most popular as it is an easy way to integrate all the data. For a single rights holder to try and take on the onus of stats is very impractical.
On top of that OBS also offer a simpler version in the I-frame that is slightly less customizable and is in use by more than 80 national Olympic committees and international federations.
VR Offers Production Assist for Rights Holders
VR also continues to be a part of the OBS deliverables, and the sports covered in VR for these games include beach volleyball, basketball, athletics, gymnastics, boxing, and the ceremonies.
We went for sports where we could get pretty close to the action, says Millington. VR doesn't really work very
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
07/10/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, today announced the latest Long-Term Supported (LTS) release of Dalet Flex. Build...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
23/07/2026
Illusionfx is finally coming!
Alex Perea July 23, 2026
0 Comments
The new website is now live to mark the occasion.
Since the last update, feedback h...
23/07/2026
Evergent (5.A86) will showcase its Agentic Revenue Orchestration Platform for streaming services, sports leagues, pay-TV operators at IBC2026 (RAI Amsterdam, 11...
23/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/07/2026
David Dvir, 2D founder (left), Sundeep Reddy (center), and Jean-Marc Bouchut (right), both of Zeiss...
23/07/2026
Screen Australia announces new national documentary accelerator program 23 July 2026
Screen Australia has today announced the Above the Line Documentary Accel...
23/07/2026
RT Commercial has today announced Centra as the official food partner once again of The Traitors Ireland, coming to RT One and RT Player later this year.
Ce...
23/07/2026
RT Commercial today announced Honda as sponsor of Today with David McCullagh RT Radio 1, weekdays 9am 11am.
Broadcasting directly after Morning Ireland in ...
23/07/2026
RT News is pleased to announce Barry Gallagher has been assigned as the new journalist covering news from Cork, Kerry and the wider Southern region
Working al...
23/07/2026
Lock in and load up the cloud. GFN Thursday brings fresh updates and new adventu...
22/07/2026
Among other tweaks to coverage, the broadcaster added announce positions in the ...
22/07/2026
The Australian Sports Technologies Network (ASTN) has reported a sharp acceleration in Australia's sportstech sector, with revenue growth rising from 10% in...
22/07/2026
From a retrofitted broadcast bus to packed Match Day Live! events, Bennett detai...
22/07/2026
TMRW Sports has named Brendan Donohue as President, Flag Football, where he will lead the company's professional flag football business in partnership with ...
22/07/2026
Stephen Arnold Music (SAM) designed and produced soundtracks for nine projection...
22/07/2026
Harmonic has announced a $25,000 donation to Global Empowerment Mission (GEM) fo...
22/07/2026
Telemundo has announced it has acquired from UC3 exclusive U.S. Spanish-language...
22/07/2026
The Rest Is Football, hosted by Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer, and Micah Richards, ...
22/07/2026
Sports Studio has announced a partnership with TheSoul Group to distribute Free ...
22/07/2026
Daktronics has concluded its 2026 High School Video Summit, a two-day hybrid event combining virtual sessions with hands-on host school visits across the countr...
22/07/2026
FOR-A America will exhibit at the MMCA Show in Pensacola, Florida (July 21-24), marking the company's first appearance at the house of worship AV event. FOR...
22/07/2026
The New York Yankees have selected Lumen Technologies (NYSE: LUMN) to connect Ya...
22/07/2026
Calrec will exhibit at IBC 2026 (Stand 8.C47) with demonstrations of its IP-native audio ecosystem built around the Argo console range, and will announce two ne...
22/07/2026
Solid State Logic has announced the appointment of Algam EKO as its distributor for SSL large format consoles in Italy, covering the Live, Broadcast, and Studio...
22/07/2026
FloSports has announced the launch of the FloSports Channel, a free ad-supported streaming channel premiering on Prime Video in the U.S. on July 21. The channel...
22/07/2026
Banana Ball TV (BTV), the broadcast operation of the Savannah Bananas, has insta...
22/07/2026
SiriusXM and Audacy have announced an agreement bringing 42 Audacy sports, news, and talk stations from 29 U.S. markets to SiriusXM. Twenty-three Audacy sports ...
22/07/2026
The collaboration produced more than 500 short-form videos across four cities th...
22/07/2026
At 2,600 sq. ft., the new home of digital content houses a main studio, podcast space, and an auxiliary control room
NFL franchises are accelerating their prod...
22/07/2026
Library now available in Engine Player
Another of Eduardo Tarilonte's popular sample libraries has just been moved over to Engine Audio's Engine Pla...
22/07/2026
All-in-one mic & DSP interface overhauled
Cloudvocal have just refreshed the design of their all-in-one mic, audio interface and DSP processor, introducing ...
22/07/2026
The final boss of the lost dual-op-amp circuit
Electro-Harmonix have just introduced the Deluxe Big Muff Pi 2, which they say offers their latest take on t...
22/07/2026
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Proven managed IP solution helps broadcasters confidently navigate the future of broadcast distribution
LTN announces it has completed successful satellite-to-...
22/07/2026
Today, Chaos announced V-Ray 7, update 4, eliminating the need for asset conversions and tool switching, which slow down media and entertainment pipelines. Arti...
22/07/2026
An AI playground for the Project Indigo camera app
Marc Levoy July 22, 2026
0 Comments
At left is the user interface of our Playground, running on an ...
22/07/2026
Custom Consoles announces the completion of a large technical furniture project for Radio T l vision Suisse (RTS) at the networks recently inaugurated productio...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Culver City, CA, July 21, 2026 3D streaming infrastructure provider Miris today announced glTF intake, including the binary .glb form, to its spatial streamin...
22/07/2026
Documentary Lo Invisible Captured with Blackmagic PYXIS 6K
Brie Clayton July 21, 2026
0 Comments
Camera's versatile design allowed filmmakers to c...
22/07/2026
AAF Bridge converts AAF and XML Timelines to Ableton Live - and back
Jerome Gardier July 21, 2026
0 Comments
A two-way converter for macOS and Windows...
Live from Tokyo Olympics: OBS Director of Digital Content Production Matt Millington On Widgets, Athlete Moments, and VR By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director 
