TV still golden in multi-platform Olympic coverage: experts

While digital and mobile options for watching the Summer Olympics are gaining in popularity and engagement, television continues to own the podium for the Canadian outlet broadcasting the two-week multi-sport tournament happening now in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In an April press release marking 100 days until the start of the Games, CBC/Radio-Canada, which holds the Canadian broadcasting rights for the event, said its coverage would be “the most digitally-accessible Games experience in Canadian history, available across more platforms than ever before.” Greg Stremlaw, executive director of CBC Sports and general manager and chef de mission for CBC’s Rio 2016 coverage, said in an email that the broadcaster’s coverage of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, “resulted in the largest-ever digital audience for Canadian coverage of an Olympic Games” and “knowing that such an appetite exists for digital content, it was important for us to make as much digital coverage available as possible for Rio 2016.” With that goal in mind, Stremlaw said “the audiences we have seen so far are a clear indication that Canadians are taking full advantage of our programming offer.” In addition to the more-than 850 hours of combined TV coverage, the broadcaster also promised more than 4,000 live-streaming hours on up to 23 daily channels through the CBC’s desktop website and dedicated mobile app. CBC also partnered with Visa and the International Olympic Committee for virtual reality content, accessible through a separate mobile app. “In terms of our streaming and digital audience, we have seen strong growth each day during the first few days of competition,” Stremlaw said, adding that CBC expected that trend to continue “as Canadians settle into the Games during the work week.” But anchoring all of the mobile options is a commitment to live-TV broadcasts, which Gordon Hendren — president of Charlton Strategic Research Inc., which has studied and tracked Olympic sponsorhip since the 2004 Summer Games in Athens, Greece — said is the right move. “I would say mobile and digital are growing, but in terms of the Olympics I think linear television is still going to be king because a majority of viewing is still on linear television,” Hendren said in a phone interview. “Because typically it’s live, it’s on the biggest screen possible, and the coverage is actually typically very good.” Having such a large mobile presence helps “because in the digital world, you can give the option to watch multiple sports or multiple events as opposed to on their broadcast they’re limited to showing one at a time,” Hendren said. After the public broadcaster won the rights to the Games in 2012, Hendren noted that it could learn from the experience of BCE Inc.'s and Rogers Communications Inc.'s joint venture — Canada's Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium, which broadcast the 2010 and 2012 Games — in terms of a multi-platform approach. “Despite our success in digital, our audience numbers clearly demonstrate that conventional TV remains the predominant way that Canadians are tuning in to watch our coverage of these Olympic Games,” CBC’s Stremlaw said. “We are also seeing nearly 70 per cent mutual viewing during primetime coverage, which also indicates that this is very much a television event that Canadians want to gather in front of a television screen to experience together.” In the two years since Sochi, CBC’s “mobile offerings have changed dramatically,” Stremlaw said, including the increase of streaming channels to 23 from 12 and the partnership with Twitter Inc.’s Twitter Amplify marketing feature. But there’s some difficulty in drawing comparisons between the 2014 Games and what CBC saw in the early days of the Rio Olympics, Stremlaw said, not only because of the winter/summer dichotomy but also because of the location, since “the time zone the Games occur in affects how people choose to consume content.” For example, he said, “much of the Rio competition is occurring during primetime when Canadian audiences are at home, versus Sochi, where the majority of competition took place during the day.” Other social media platforms now in use, like Snapchat Inc.’s service, didn’t even exist during the previous Olympic Games, Hendren noted. Complementing the CBC’s offerings, its broadcast partners Bell and Rogers are also carrying Olympic coverage on their TSN and Sportsnet platforms, respectively. TSN is “embracing the Games in Brazil with the same comprehensive multi-platform approach employed for many of the 60-plus championships that live on TSN, including the Grey Cup, World Juniors, and FIFA World Cup,” Renee Rouse, spokesperson for TSN and Bell Media Sports, said in an email. In addition to broadcasting the Games on its five national TV feeds, which are also available to subscribers on the TSN website and through the TSN Go app, and via editorial coverage on SportsCentre and through TSN’s social media accounts, “TSN Radio’s live coverage of Rio 2016 is also available via live stream on the TSN Go app,” she said. Sportsnet’s linear TV coverage is also duplicated on its mobile and online TV platforms. The overall trend is that mobile access to sporting events is growing, Hendren said. “So is digital growing for Olympic engagement? I’d say absolutely yes, because it just builds off of the notion that mobile access is growing, use of mobile is growing, use of mobile to access sport content is growing in general,” Hendren said. “This is just another event to use it on.” The variety of mobile options for watching the Games will translate into more consumption, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into a boost to service providers’ bottom lines, Ronald Gruia, director of emerging telecom at Frost and Sullivan, said in a phone interview. “I think the problem is that a lot of that consumption is going to happen on WiFi which is already monetized. It’s not like incur more revenue,” he said. The majority of users are price conscious, Gruia said, and if they’re not connected to a WiFi network for mobile viewing, they are likely to have a data package that supports mobile video streaming. “Most consumers will not go out on a binge or will not go out of their way to pay,” he said. “They’re going to be conservative, especially in Canada, and they’re not going to overspend just to catch Olympic fever, so to speak.” — With reporting by Charelle Evelyn at cevelyn@thewirereport.ca and editing by Ahmad Hathout at ahathout@thewirereport.ca

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TV still golden in multi-platform Olympic coverage: experts

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