PYEONGCHANG,February 27, 2018 - The flame is no longer burning in the cauldron, theathletes are back home and the lights have been turned off in all the venues asPyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games have come to an end. And if there is onereason that people around the world enjoyed watching the Games, it is thanks tothe Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) who had the largest operation ever inthe history of Winter Olympics.

More than5000 hours of content were produced even though the competitions themselvesrequire less than 1000 hours according to the CEO of OBS Yiannis Exarchos, who spokeexclusively to AIPS about the what made these Games different that the previousyears.

He said: “Thosehave been an exceptionally successful Games, very well organized especially fora country that is not familiar with winter sports, I think this is the start ofwinter sports for Korea, they were extremely well staged Games. The level ofcompetition was very high and the venues are beautiful.”

“Thefeedback that we received from our broadcasting partners speak about big ratings,great level of satisfaction and explosion on the front of digital consumption,because now we don’t have just traditional media televisions, we have a lot ofcontent on digital.”

“We produced additional content for social media and havelaunched dedicated platforms that the broadcasters can use, we do a lot on thedigital front and provide additional data, so I believe by far this is the mostcomprehensive coverage we have done.”

Incomparison with Sochi, OBS produced 3700 hours of content four years ago. Andeven though OBS provide the basic production in high definition, they also producedin 4K, 4K HDR and 8K in cooperation with Japanese television, a stunning formatfor the future - at Tokyo 2020 maybe - that they will have in PyeongChang 2018archives.

ICTOlympics

During a visit to the journalists at the Main Press Center, SouthKorea president Moon Jae-inspoke about PyeongChang 2018 beingICT Games (Information and Communications technologies), but where did thisexactly happen on the broadcasting level?

Exarchosexplained: “I would say that the major element is the shift to digital.Actually, not exactly a shift because traditional televisions remain veryimportant and the main area of consumption of the Games. However, we docurrently have an estimation that probably the number of hours of content thatthe right holders and broadcasters put out for the public is twoparts digital and one part traditional television.

“Even inthe most advanced markets like North America and Europe, you see already thatthe digital is taking over. I think the shift to digital is important preciselybecause it represents an engagement and embracement of the young generationwith the Olympics.”

Fundamentalrelation

Therelationship between OBS and the broadcasters, especially the very big oneslike NBC for USA, CBC for Canada and Discovery Eurosport for Europe, isfundamental. They are the keys that allow vast part of the population of theworld to watch the Games but also their contribution is very importantfinancially.

“The rights' revenues are still the single most important source of revenues for the OlympicMovement and it is important to underline “Olympic Movement”. Those are not therevenues of the IOC; the IOC keeps like 9% from the total revenues of TV rightsand sponsors for its own operational needs. But the rest is distributed andinvested in the development of sport; those are amounts that the IOCcontribute to the host cities of the Games and to all internationalfederations and NOCs.”

“Thedevelopment and financial health of most sports would be unthinkable withoutthese contributions from IOC that essentially come to a big extent from the TVrights.” Exarchos told AIPS.

Universalcoverage

PyeongChang2018 were the first Winter Olympics that had practically a universal coverage.Unlike the Summer Games, Winter’s mostly focus on traditionally winter sportscountries. However, with the assistance of the Olympic Channel, the new digitalplatform of the IOC, OBS provided full coverage of the Games on digital in newterritories like Indian subcontinents.

“We hadcoverage in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, thesepeople represent 1.7 billion of the world’s population who are not into wintersports, but the Olympic Movement is not about sports, it is about our valuesand it is important for us that those ideas and the five rings reach everyone.”Exarchos said.

OlympicChannel double task

The SummerOlympics is already the most seen event in the world, so the Olympic Channel wascreated primarily in order to sustain the interest in sports and the Olympic Movementduring the period tin between the Games. These periods are dominated in everycountry by two or three dominant sports, like football in Europe, AmericanFootball or NBA in the United States.

Exarchossaid: “This is a very good thing but the bad thing is that many of the Olympicsports do not have any exposure and the continuous engagement that theydeserve. During the Games, we discover all those incredible stories of allthose true heroes and athletes, we read their stories and we say “where have those people been? And then the flame goes off and they sort of disappear evenin big sports like swimming, Michael Phelps for example you hardly see himcompeting in between the Olympics.”

“So theidea was to create a platform where there can be a constant promotion ofOlympic sports and constant touch with the athletes but also a platform thatcan primarily bring into sports the young generation. We know that thefollowing of sports is growing in age, that the millennia generation is notpicking up sports as much as we would have liked, so this is an effort to makethe young generation embrace sport and I believe that the channel has been up sinceonly 18 months but if we can speak about one big success is that 85% of itsfollowers are below the age of 35. For those who are aware about demographic ofsports will realize that this is a big success.”

The OlympicChannel was also created to be a support for the Olympic Movement in coveringterritories or areas that perhaps are not covered, and the Winter Games were agood example where IOC did not have right holders covering the whole populationof the earth so the Olympic Channel has assumed this responsibility.

Greece's Exarchos who wasnamed CEO of OBS following London 2012, said: “The Olympic channel gets the feed that OBS is producing but on top ofthat they do special stories dedicated for those areas. In India and in the subcontinents,they will be broadcasting 1300 hours of coverage and additional stories so ifyou go to the digital asset of the Olympic Channel in those countries, in Indiafor example, you will see a version of the channel which has been customizedfor the Indians and Indian athletes in addition to the competitions of the Games.”

“Moreover,we launched in PyeongChang a new offering from OBS which is called “contentplus”, this is web based platform where all right holding broadcasters can goin and select primarily short form content that we produce, it is mainlycontent targeted to social media use. We have posted more than 4000 differentpieces of content and the downloads the broadcasters have done is huge, asignificant amount of that is also a content produced by the Olympic Channeland provided to OBS and therefore to the right holding broadcasters.”

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Sustainablebuilding

The OBS islocated in the International Broadcast Center (IBC), the heart of the broadcastoperations, a temporarily building that was built just for the Games. It has atotal space of 55 000 square meters, around 38 000 is taken by the rightsholding broadcasters.

“It’s not aluxurious building and IBC does not need to be like that, it has to be very simpleand very functional. This is one of the best buildings we have ever worked in,the total number of broadcasters in the Games is 11 500, more than 4000 of themwork for OBS while the rest are right holders. There are days where you havemore than 8000 people working at the IBC.

“The building is 100% sustainable; soeverything you see around here is material that was used in Rio 2016 and will bereused in Tokyo 2020 and potentially in Beijing 2022, we want to have 100%sustainability in the operation of broadcast.

“We hadalso a transition in using fiber instead of copper cables and to a very bigextent we use fiber also in the venues and this contributes to thesustainability of our operations. This is the biggest operation we have done,we have 4000 people working with us, 650 of those are Korean universities’students that we trained as part of OBS training program, they work in juniorbroadcast positions so they work as assistants’ camera, audio and telecommunications.They study in areas similar to what we do in broadcast, engineering, sport andthey work in those junior professional positions and are being paid for that,they are not volunteers. So probably most of them had their first job in theirlives by participating in the biggest production in the world.”

Tokyo2020: milestones for broadcasting

Tokyo 2020 isjust two years ahead and the expectations are really high for what sophisticatedand extremely developed Japan itself can provide to the Games in terms oftechnology. In PyeongChang 2018, half a million-people watched the competitionsin virtual reality and Exarchos expects a milestone for OBS work.

He said: “Thepreparations in Tokyo are doing very well with the fantastic organizingcommittee. Tokyo and Japan burn the lights of technology, there is a disruptioncoming from fundamental new technologies that I believe are inevitable toinfluence broadcasting.

“We want to be in the front gear of broadcasting, we want to excel butwe want to try also new things as we tried virtual reality coverage inPyeongChang. For Tokyo, I consider that those are going to be milestones Gamesfor broadcasting; you have the emergence of some very important technologiesthat were not produced before like Artificial Intelligence and Internet ofThings, Augmented Reality and this is where we will start focusing more ourattention.

“We willalways try to make the television coverage the best possible but I cannot hide the fact that we are extremely attempted by whattechnology has in store today. I am a huge believer of technology as an enabler,I don’t like doing complicated things just for the sake of doing them but Ibelieve those technologies have a lot of tools to offer to us to make thestories of the Games and the athletes more compelling.  So, I believe technology provides today themeans and the tools to tell the stories of the greatest athletes of the worldin ways that were not imaginable before and this is what we want to do inTokyo.” Exarchos concluded.