How the Olympic Host Broadcasts Are Created

(ATR) Broadcasters during the 2018 Olympics need to eat, and last week’s storms damaged the catering services. Now security keeps stopping workers from bringing in sealed "snacks" to venues around the Games.

Olympic Broadcasting Services and PyeongChang 2018 are trying to resolve the issue. However, there is no simple solution.PyeongChang 2018 says allowing broadcasters to circumvent what it feels are established rules could create public mistrust. OBS says this policy has been in place for multiple Olympics and there is no negotiation.

A "tense" negotiation takes place in a behind the scenes meeting between OBS and PyeongChang 2018. The situation stays unresolved, but PyeongChang 2018 says it will elevate the conversation so a solution can be found soon.

The conversations playing out are just one of many issues that are part of the daily agenda for OBS. The issues rarely get reported in the media, much like the OBS operation itself. The company, established by the IOC to be the permanent host broadcaster in 2001 for the Olympics for the 2008 Games, is proud of this fact. The less Olympic viewers know about its host broadcaster the better, it believes, as the Rights Holding Broadcasters should be the focal point of spectators around the world.

Around the Rings was afforded a look behind the scenes at OBS’s operation to understand the scale of what is needed to broadcast the Olympic Games worldwide. For example, the company only has 162 permanent staff, yet for a Winter Games there will be over 4,000 OBS staffers working to produce the host broadcast feed that ends up in the homes of millions of people worldwide.

"Our relationship [with PyeongChang 2018] is very smooth," Yiannis Exarchos, OBS chief executive, said to ATR. "The fact we can spend so much time discussing [small issues] means it is going very well."

OBS is a company constantly balancing parallel missions. It needs to produce, as close as it can, a perfect broadcast for a multitude of sports that are rarely shown to the public except for the Olympic Games, and each broadcast must be compelling. It also needs to balance the needs of traditional broadcast television while staying ahead of a variety of digital technologies that may or may not be the future of consumption for the Games.

For the 2018 Games OBS is balancing its responsibility as the host broadcaster and having the opportunity to experiment with innovative technologies. Teams are simultaneously focused on the minute details needed to run quality control on every broadcast for traditional television consumption, yet at the same time the company is producing hours of virtual reality content ensuring it’s a leader in a nascent field.

As the 2018 Winter Olympics draw to a close, OBS will have produced more than 5,000 hours of broadcasts for rights holders. Two-hundred hours of digital content will be made available to rights holders on the Content+ platform, which can be downloaded instantly and distributed to non-television platforms.

A Host Broadcaster Is Formed

The idea for a permanent host broadcasting company came before the 2008 Olympics.

Before and including the Beijing Olympics the host broadcasting duties and costs fell within the roles of the organizing committee, with hundreds of staff being used to produce each Games. So in 2001 the IOC created OBS as an independent company to run host broadcasting.

OBS began full control of host broadcasting for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. Meanwhile executives say this effort has been successful because the amount of content distributed by the company has grown exponentially, while costs have flatlined. However, Exarchos declined to say what the company’s budget is for the Olympics.

Starting in Rio, the Broadcaster spaces within the International Broadcast Center for the Olympics has incorporated a modular interior that could be packed up once the Games left town. Many offices built for PyeongChang were transported from Rio directly, and are expected to be used in Tokyo.

OBS debuted a number of new technologies during the 2018 Olympics. It is working with Korea Telecom to take advantage of the trial 5G network to upload vast amounts of data. It is producing Winter Olympic content in high definition 180-degrees virtual reality, as well as 4K and 8K high definition streams.

For the first time ever, high speed cameras have been placed in and around venues to create a 360-degree view of the field of play. Dubbed "timesplice," the technology allowed broadcasters to pause athletes' runs and then rotate the camera angle to analyze performances in real time.

Chief Technical Officer Sotiris Salamouris summed up OBS as an "extensive production company," needing proper storytellers, but also a company that must excel at "provident technical services, wide in scope, to rights broadcasters".

Understanding Rights Holders' Needs

In order to achieve its parallel missions, OBS must understand what rights holders need for the Games.

Four years before an Olympics OBS actually starts working with organizers on the ground to sort out camera positions and other technical requirements.

"People don’t appreciate the scale and [all of] the different sports," Karen Mullins, director of production management at OBS, said to ATR.

For the 2018 Winter Games technical preparations needed to be done for seven sports with 15 disciplines. Mullins said that her team expects to come into the venues with everything set up to specifications arranged beforehand, but as always it is impossible to plan for everything.

Those challenges rise when a large number of sports take place outdoors in sometimes perilous conditions. To compensate for the vast expertise needed to be perfect at each sport, OBS works with broadcasters who are considered "experts" in each sport, Mullins said. For example, OBS will hire the best freelance crew it can from Canada to staff the ice hockey venue.

Two years out from the Olympics OBS solicits what rights holders need in terms of space and technical operations. Then the IBC can begin to be configured to the right specifications.

During the Olympics OBS offers all rights holders access to its signals. More importantly Jorge Pickering, head of broadcaster services, says the company offers a way for rights holders to "custom tailor" the outputs of the host broadcaster to meet their needs.

Some rights holders rely fully on the multi-lateral feeds produced by OBS. Large broadcasters such as NBC or Eurosport rely on OBS’s feeds for nearly 90 percent of broadcasts according to executives, customizing them only with unilateral cameras and equipments.. No matter how much or how little the rights holders use, OBS says its approach to quality can’t waver.

The hiring, or on boarding, of freelancers for the Games takes around 18 months according to Marie Bandao, senior crewing manager. Each freelancer needs to have travel, accommodation, uniforms, and food paid for, all while the talent pool is drawn from all over the world. OBS draws from a central database of trusted vendors while also working with local university students as part of a "legacy program".

The students are training in 11 different positions and paid to work on the Olympic Games. Bandao said many of the students end up working for OBS on future Games.

The uniform process takes nearly as long as the on boarding process according to Patricia Diaz, senior accreditation manager. OBS has a deal with a major sportswear provider to produce custom uniforms which must take into account weather, staff duties and comfort, while maintaining variety. Every detail down to the color scheme is planned out in the 18 months before the Games, with many staffers receiving their kits upon arrival to the Olympic Games.

Heart of the Olympic Feed

To handle the Herculean task of producing and distributing feeds for every event at the Olympics OBS has created what it calls the "multi-channel distribution service" (MDS).

This is a centralized production hub within the IBC produces its Olympic broadcasts, where every rights holder has access to its ready-to-air feeds. It is there that eight channels continually broadcast all of the live Olympic sports at the Games with English commentary and graphics, with beauty shots interspersed.

Around 135 people are involved with the MDS day to day including commentators. As always rights holders are free to use as much or as little as OBS produces in these channels.

The MDS juggles a total of eight feeds a day, where, according to Kostas Kapatais, "there is not a single minute where sport isn’t being broadcast to rights holders".

Kapatais is OBS’ Senior Programming Producer and oversees the MDS. He says that for the 2018 Games the MDS will produce around 860 hours of material, not including athlete interviews from the mixed zones.

As these feeds are being produced, a team of content control personnel are ensuring that nothing goes awry.

"We have to get the coverage right," Mark Wallace, OBS chief content officer, said of the operation. "It is easy to get distracted by buzzwords, but we cannot be distracted by the live sports coverage."

Wallace’s team oversees to make sure that everything looks perfect so that the most pristine coverage of the Olympics enters homes around the world. He says his team is especially conscious of how lighting and the look of the Games flow. The team also works to make sure every athlete is captured by OBS cameras during competition, with appropriate graphics.

The level of detail shown by the team is evident in alerts that get sent out if a mistake happens. During the tour, one alert came through saying a back-of-the-pack athlete had been skipped in broadcasting a women’s alpine event. The athlete’s absence would probably not be missed by nearly all rights holders but OBS still considers it a mistake.

Empty seats at the PyeongChang 2018 Games have irked broadcasters because "the Olympics are a TV sport," according to Wallace. These stark realities remind broadcasters of the rise of digital platforms in the changing landscape of how the Olympics are being consumed.

Television Still King, As Digital Rises

For OBS to remain as successful as it is in producing an Olympic Games it has to constantly be adopting new technologies and putting them to use.

That means that OBS must be taking risks in case a new technology emerges that could threaten the status quo. Eight years ago there were limited streaming options on mobile platforms. Now the way we consume the Games has shifted.

"Television still remains king," Matt Millington, director of digital content, told ATR. "But we know increasingly more and more people watch by phones.

"The Broadcast operation must not be compromised, but we ensure everything for broadcast is available for digital."

No matter what, Exarchos says the end goal of the operation is to align everything with Olympic values. The 5,000 hours of television and digital content produced must be unbiased and must be to the highest standards.

"I see consistently from Games to Games media consumption increases," Exarchos said. "No doubt that this increase is of billions of people, people who will continue loving the Olympic Games.

"Pierre de Coubertain wrote in his Olympic memoir with a sense of humor, ‘During each Olympiad I read it will be the last.’ He wrote that in 1932. As long as I remember it is still true. Times are changing and challenges are different every time, but I think the constant is the concept of the five rings, the ideals they stand for are still valued."

Written by Aaron Bauerin PyeongChang

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