Canadian public-service broadcaster CBC has acquired domestic rights for the 2014 winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, and the 2016 summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The agreement with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) includes rights covering all media platforms, including free-to-air television, pay-television, the internet and mobile devices, in all languages, allowing CBC to show the coverage in English and French.
The deal also includes sub-licensing rights, according to CBC.
Financial details have not been disclosed, but the Toronto Star newspaper said that the rights fee is between C$75 million (€61 million/$74 million) and C$80 million.
CBC president Hubert Lacroix said the broadcaster had submitted a “very financially and fiscally responsible bid” to secure the rights.
In June, CBC and telecommunications company Bell scrapped their joint bid for the Canadian rights for 2014 and 2016 Olympics, having had two offers rejected by the IOC. CBC and Bell’s final bid, which was rejected in February, was believed to be around half the value of the C$153 million that telecommunications company Rogers Communications and Bell jointly paid for the rights covering the 2010 and 2012 Games. Rogers said last year that it would not bid for the next cycle of rights.
“When you’re a Bell or a Rogers you have… a lot of cost considerations that we don’t necessarily have when we go alone,” Kirstine Stewart, CBC’s head of English services, said. “We’re just in a different position. Our bid is structured completely differently than the private broadcasters’ would be.”
Stewart said: “We’ve made sure that the deal we put together in front of the IOC was one that was balanced in a way that should be cost-neutral at the end of the day. We’ll now go out and find partners, like we have in the past.”
The 2008 Beijing Olympics was the most recent Games to be shown by CBC.