Fans embracing new ways to consume the Olympic Winter Games at Beijing 2022
Record breaking amounts of content are being delivered so far from the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022. This was announced by Yiannis Exarchos, CEO of Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) in the daily press briefing of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Beijing 2022 Organising Committee.
OBS is delivering 6,000 hours of content, the most ever for the Olympic Winter Games. With the competitions themselves underway for less than 1,000 hours: “All this additional content is geared towards feeding the needs of digital broadcasting – producing four different types of media and platforms, telling stories of the athletes behind the scenes, producing features and interviews.”
Exarchos observed that this highlights the continually evolving shift in the way content is being consumed globally. He said: “These seismic changes really inform the work that we do in producing the Games and in providing content to our broadcasters.”
This is complimented by the new technologies being leveraged, to bring the magic of the Olympic Winter Games to more people in more ways all around the world, particularly focusing on younger audiences.
“We committed to delivering the most innovative Games ever, despite the challenges of the pandemic,” he said, something that has been evident with Beijing 2022 becoming the first Olympic Winter Games to be produced natively in Ultra High Definition (UHD) High Dynamic Range (HDR) and 5.4.1. immersive audio. These new standards elevate the pictures and sounds, delivering more life-like details, realistic and richer colours, and breath-taking contrast and sharpness, while also capturing the sounds of the Games in a way that enables viewers to have a more realistic audio experience, with sound appearing to come from every direction – even from above.
This shift in the way people are consuming the Olympic Games is also evident in the high levels of engagement so far on the IOC’s digital platforms, Exarchos said.
As of Wednesday, 45 million unique users had visited Olympics owned and operated channels Olympics.com and the app, which is already surpassing the total for the whole of the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018. To date, there have been two billion engagements across all Olympics social media handles.
With over a week to go, this trend is set to continue, with fans around the world embracing new ways to consume the Olympic Winter Games.