The Olympic Channel, the International Olympic Committee’s OTT platform, has said it will soon provide a new language offering in Hindi and has now grown its social media community to more than nine million.
The announcement came as the Olympic Channel reflected on the third year of operations following its launch after the closing ceremony of the 2016 summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
There have been more than 2.45 billion videos views, with 78 per cent of those engaging with content on social media under the age of 35.
Looking to the future, Olympic Channel general manager Mark Parkman said: “Creating more localised content in order to provide fans with a deeper and more immersive experience is a key area of growth for us. We have evolved from a singular, global video platform in one language and grown to 11 languages, with Hindi coming soon, with additional features and distribution on multiple platforms which enhance the overall viewer experience.
“In certain markets, we are creating relevant content that serves the local audience to ensure they are engaging with content that they are most interested in.”
The Olympic Channel is already offered in 11 languages, namely Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish and Russian, and with subtitling available for select premium content.
A linear version of the Channel will soon launch in China through an agreement announced in June with state broadcaster (and rights-holder) CCTV.
The Olympic Channel does not showcase live coverage during the Olympics themselves, unless there are markets in which rights have not been sold to broadcasters.
The Olympic Channel marks its three-year anniversary with the platform now providing more than 19,000 videos representing all Olympic sport disciplines and 206 countries, 65 original series and partnerships with 91 international sport Federations and multi-sport organisers.
The Olympic Channel said live event coverage of Buenos Aires’ 2018 summer Youth Olympic Games, localisation efforts in the Japanese market and original programming and digital content contributed to a 330-per-cent increase in organic traffic to the platform from the previous year. Average watch time on the platform is 8:14 minutes per video watched.