Eurosport has unveiled plans for its coverage of the 2018 winter Olympics to mark 100 days to go until the start of the PyeongChang 2018 Games.
The sports broadcaster says it will deliver the first ‘fully digital’ Games live and on-demand across screens in 48 markets and will make every minute of the event available through the Eurosport Player streaming platform.
The Discovery-owned channel is placing the emphasis on personalisation and localisation in its coverage and will invite Olympic fans to take control of their viewing experience in a November marketing campaign that features a cover version of Queen’s ‘I want it all’ performed by the London Symphony orchestra.
The Pyeongchang Olympics will represent the first time Eurosport has broadcast coverage of the Games as part of the 2015 deal it struck with the International Olympic Committee for rights to the four editions of the event between 2018 and 2024.
Since striking the deal, Eurosport has agreed sublicensing deals with more than 30 national broadcasters across Europe and recently announced a partnership with Snap in Europe to deliver user-generated and behind-the-scenes content from Pyeongchang to Snapchat users throughout most of the continent.
Jean-Briac Perrette, Discovery Networks International president and chief executive, said: “When people have the choice to watch big events, we still believe they will watch it on the biggest screen available to them, but at the same time we know more people are consuming content on these devices and given time zones etc. people want to have immediate access to what’s going on, so it will be available on more screens.
“The only place across Europe where you will have access to everything, not the highlights, not the best-of, but everything will be on Eurosport Digital, Eurosport.com, Eurosport Player.”
The company said it had invested in a 55-person dedicated mobile studio, which includes social media influencers, to create engaging social media content around the Games. It has also created an augmented reality studio called the ‘Eurosport Cube’ to offer deeper, data-led analysis of the sporting action.
To reflect the greater focus on its digital offering, Perrette said the broadcaster would judge the success of its coverage based on engagement metrics rather than traditional linear consumption metrics.
“We know the world is getting more disaggregated and that one of the big frustrations I have is we still look at metrics in the old way – of television ratings and [whether] people’s use of television is going up or declining – but the reality is that is a prehistoric way of looking at video consumption,” he added.
In spite of this, Eurosport chief executive Peter Hutton said the broadcaster could shift the focus to audience engagement from a position of strength.
“Our TV ratings are up 20-per-cent-plus all over Europe this year which is remarkable for the industry, but at the same time we know that’s not our target,” Hutton said. “Our target is: yes, absolutely as many people as possible on television, but also we have to engage with them in so many other ways as well. So, it’s important that when we set our own targets, our own targets are about how many people do we touch and how many people care about what we do.”
To celebrate the 100-days-to-go landmark, Eurosport will dedicate the whole of today (Wednesday) to Olympic programming and content.