“Virtual becomes real” and the end of sports “as an entertainment moment”: in-depth interview with one of the most powerful men in Olympics

TOKYO - Arriving at the office of Yiannis Exarchos in the heart of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics is a kind of journey into the future. The IBC (International Broadcasting Centre) looks, as usual, more modern and powerful than the MPC (Main Press Center). On the way there is the 8K projection room, further on the image quality control room, where Mark Wallace, Chief Production Officer, checks obsessively every detail with his dedicated team.

A few meters before, the army of people dedicated to nurturing and editing the archive is impressive. Each one at his or her desk, in silence and in his or her own world, ensures that the memory of the Games never fades. That is why the archive has three different physical locations: if one fails, the other two serve as backups.

Everything is huge, everything is state of the art on Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS), a fascinating animal that is like those stuffed sponges that occupy a minimal space: if water is poured on them, they immediately multiply in size. That is why OBS works in normal times with 200 people and during the Games it reaches almost 8,000, according to Konstantinos Vernikos, a man with a very long experience in the field and one of Exarchos’ right-hand men.

Yes, everything is huge and state of the art until you enter the office of the CEO of Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS), a small cubicle without windows, completely white.

White as the usual image of a Greek island. And Greek is Exarchos, who in the opening moments of the conversation with Around the Rings makes two things clear: the Tokyo Games are the biggest Games ever, and the fact that they are played without an audience is “the sad part of this story”.

Exarchos, 56, is a man who combines clear words with constant doses of humor, but he also knows the rules of Olympic diplomacy. He appeals to them when ATR asks him if he ever imagined, when the bid of the two Koreas was postulated as possible, the joint work of OBS with North Korean television.

“I would be prepared to work with any nation. I’ve worked with so many countries and I’ve seen so many commonalities among all of us. I have no doubt that this would work”.

- We are in Tokyo, but Beijing is only six months ahead. How do you cope with this?

- Beijing has already started for us. As we speak we have 50 people working in building the IBC in Beijing. The organizing Committee already delivered the IBC to us, and we did the ceremony with part of our team there and part of our team in Tokyo. The operation in Beijing has started before the opening ceremony in Tokyo. We had to reschedule a lot of the operations, movement of the equipment, what has to go there, what has to remain here for the Paralympics... We have an operation in three cities right now: Tokyo, Beijing and Madrid.

- This means you will have part of your team flying straight to Tokyo after the end of the Paralympics in September?

- Once everything is finished here some people and a lot of equipment will fly directly from Tokyo to Beijing. We have considered this as a continuous operation from February 2021 until the end of March 2022.

- What happened with OBS last year when the Games were postponed?

- When the Games were postponed we had 150 people here. We were five percent away of finishing the construction of the IBC and we were partially installing equipment. At the time we froze everything. We racked everything and we connected every equipment we had left so we could monitor them from Madrid to see what their status is throughout the year. And then we brought all the teams back to Europe, USA and Australia during April, which was one of the most difficult months. In Spain we had a complete lockdown. During that time we were relocating the team back from Tokyo.

- When you compare Tokyo 2020 with Rio 2016, what is different?

- We need to understand that the Games of Tokyo are the biggest Games ever. We have five new sports, these Games are significantly bigger than Rio and far more complex. We do not have an Olympic Park, a hub that concentrates the majority of the sports, all the venues are distributed, which is an additional complexity. The quality of the venues is top quality and delivered in time. In Rio we had challenges.

- Challenges sounds like a very nice word...

- (laughs) I’m fond of Brazil and Rio and I have very good memories. It’s not a secret that in Rio even days before the Games there were problems, the field of play was not ready, no need to remind you of the diving pool and a number of other things. That is not a problem here. The way things are planned and executed in Japan, a country very, very structured, very risk averse, everything needs to be planned way ahead.

- Would you say that there is no bigger distance in terms of Games organization than between Rio and Tokyo?

- I would say that there are not two more different operations than these two. In Brazil people make things happen, not because they had a plan, but because at a certain point they will do whatever is needed, and that’s the way they deliver. And here is a culture far more structured and risk averse, and this is not always easy, because people don’t like to get out of their comfort zone. And you have the pandemic changing constantly the situation and the measures. This has been a challenge. I totally share the concern and the desire of delivering very safe Games, and I think we are achieving that, and this is the most important thing. But at the same time there are some constraints in the operation. The only thing I really still miss here is the presence of the spectators. I totally respect the decision but I think this is sort of the sad part of the story. We have done a lot of things to try to minimize this problem. Fan engagement, for instance, and we created what we call the athlete moment, a moment of live interaction between the athlete and their friends or family. So the athletes feel that they are not at a training session, but at the real Olympic competition. We have to be honest, you can’t substitute the human presence in any sporting event, let alone in the Olympics, we know what the Olympics mean for a nation, what source of pride they are.

- The empty stadium opening ceremony must have been a challenge for you, was it?

- It has, it has. The ceremony changed throughout the different phases of the pandemic and has been adapted to the general mood of the pandemic. An opening ceremony is a celebration of the culture, the people of the county and the athletes. To have an opening ceremony where you can’t have a representation of the country and athletes have to pass fast and so on, obviously means some limitations. This said, we had to deal with a very, very creative team, headed by Hioki Takayuchi, who is a brilliant young producer, always with a smile. He delivered a show that has been the biggest televised event of the last ten years in Japanese TV and with levels of attraction similar to 1964. The element of the drone was sort of a celebration of the whole world over the whole city, the part of Imagine which was an international moment. There were a number of solutions...

- The human pictograms. It was a very unique and very Japanese moment, wasn’t it?

- It was a brilliant moment from conception and we knew that if it worked well it would be fantastic. It never worked well in the rehearsals, it worked well in the ceremony. It was technically very complicated. Special movements, special cameras. In the ceremony, that’s the magic of the Games, it worked perfectly.

- Is the gap between the Games on site and the Games on TV bigger than ever?

- Not really. Actually I believe that this gap is closing. Why? We have tried during the coverage of the Olympic Games something as immersive as possible. Provide the opportunity around the world, to have the sense of really being there. We produce 9.400 hours of content for these Games. The competition is roughly 3.500 hours. All the rest are forms of content that really create and recreate this special atmosphere around the Games. All the things that make the Olympic Games really unique and not just a random collection of sports competition. The way people experience the Games now is far more comprehensive and diverse. We are trying to close the cycle by actually bringing back into the city the reaction from the people. We will have more than 4.5 billion people watching the Games, maybe more. We knew we would have athletes going into an empty venue without spectators, but they would be watched by hundreds of millions of people who would be excited, who would be emotional, screaming in their houses. Technology allows us to close the cycle. By the fourth day of the Games we had already 60 million reactions from all over the world.

- Do you mean that virtual became real?

- Virtual became real, because actually this is not virtual reality, but actual people cheering for their teams.

- This is also linked to the way we have been living for the last year and a half because of the pandemic.

- Exactly. Which has become to a point of burdensome, but in this sense is really something that helps the athletes. They are not alone, they represent the desires and hopes of people around the world. The other thing is to connect the athletes with their friends and families, which is another of the sad stories of these Games. When an athlete completes his performance the first thing you can tell they do is they turn and look for the eyes of someone important for them in the stadium, they share the moment with someone they love the most. Here they can’t, so we created the athlete’s moment, which is even before going to the mixed zone. For instance, Tom Daley cheering with his friends back home. This is super important for the athletes, but also for the broadcast, provides a more human moment in the coverage. You know... Michael Phelps is the most decorated athlete in Olympic history, people know him very well, but they also know his mother very well, because of the reaction and connection between both.

- And this technology and experience arrived to stay...

- We were planning to do something like that in Beijing. We fast tracked it when it was announced that there would be international spectators. And then we knew there would be even no local spectators. We are learning a lot.

- I was checking the 8K technology today, and the amazing and new thing there is the end of focusing, it is no longer necessary to focus on a person or a specific aspect of the image. It is a big change...

- It’s a continuum. In the past you were trying to put the Olympic Games in the frame of a television. Now, you are actually telling the story of the Games from device to device. Is one experience on TV, another one on the mobile phone, when you are relaxing, when you are working... For me it’s an incredibly interesting period because it helps sports to become part of daily life in a more immersive way than we would have ever imagined. The life cycle of sports and it’s gonna be part of people’s life in a more permanent way. And this is very important, because it is very difficult to be an Olympian if you don’t live a life of values. If you have no discipline and you are not honest with yourself, you can’t be an Olympian. All these 10.800 athletes are role models in life. I much rather prefer people discussing the lives and achievements of these athletes than spending time with some stupid celebrity. This is a platform to talk about human rights, gender equality. This is the important thing that’s happening. We are moving a little bit further away from the perception of sports as an entertainment moment.

- You have better cameras now... Also less cameras?

- The number of cameras itself has not increased. With the upgrade in resolution you need slightly less cameras to contain the same information. We produce for the first time of the Games in 4K and High Dynamic Range (HDR), this makes a difference. We are making a great difference in audio, and we sometimes underestimate audio, but audio is the great carrier of emotion, it makes you cry, smile and so on.

- And TV’s at home are much different than a few years ago.

- Yes. Here for the first time we don’t do just 5.1, we do 5.1.4, which is not just surround, but is immersive sound, which creates a sense of spherical environment. The importance is not just that we create audio information, but the fact that we know that this audio information creates emotion. You know, you used to say that watching is not like being there. Well, many of the elements of being there have to do with the fact that you receive audio from all directions. We are trying to recreate that.

- At this stage, only the Japanese can enjoy 8K, am I right?

- Yes, 8K is for Japan. And China is moving very, very fast into 8K. Is the last frontier, because then we are getting into territories were the resolution is higher than what the human eye can handle.

- There shouldn’t be a 16K, then...

- Doesn’t make sense (laughs).

- The images from surfing, in its Olympic debut, were as beautiful as immersive. How did you do it?

- We had cameras in the water, in the sand, in the air... For all the new sports our goal was that, not being Olympic sports, they probably hadn’t the level, because they were mainly on streaming. But not, they are now Olympic sports, they have to be at exactly the same level as all other Olympic sports. For us was fundamental, this is all about being in the water. Yeah, is fun watching it from the shore, but the sport is about being in the water.

- How is your relationship with the IOC and with the Argentine Gerardo Werthein, member of the executive committee and the man in charge of OBS in the organization?

- Gerardo is the chairman of OBS and he is my boss. He is a force of nature in the sense of being an extremely passionate man about sports. He is very much into new technologies and social media. He is an early adopter, and also a person who gets things done and looks for result. The 2018 Youth Olympic Games were not in perfect circumstances with Argentina under financial difficulties, but they proved they can deliver and get things done. It’s been a joy to work with Gerardo and his team. And for me it is a huge support as chairman of OBS, because he is always supportive about new things we want to do. Is not easy. The Games are complex, to change something is not easy, because it always has a lot of impact. Gerardo is among the people who embrace and support changes, and for me this is a lot.

- You always praised those Youth Games in Buenos Aires. Was the experience different than in Rio? Both countries share the same region.

- Very, very different. It was a great experience both of them but it was very different. In Argentina, first of all, the way of working was far more structured. Not very different than the way of working in Europe. What I loved in Buenos Aires is that from the beginning there was a concept from the organizing committee and the city itself to bring the Games to the heart of the city. To really open up sports so you can walk into the venues. The truth is, that wouldn’t have been easy in Rio. Rio is a stunning city to look at, but it’s not always easy to open up. In Buenos Aires you had young sports people and a nation that adores sports. For me, Buenos Aires was my more fascinating Olympic experience. I love the city. I love tango. I told you that my first film was based on the music of (Argentine musician and composer Astor) Piazzolla, and I was 25 years old.

- You have several Games with confirmed venues ahead of you. How will you make sure that things continue to improve in terms of production and television?

- I’m very happy to see in my interactions with the organizing committees that all these places have a vision, a clear vision of what the Games mean for them and the country. One of the problems in the past was the idea that you had to do perfect Games. And that is something you cannot do, you don’t have to. Every Game has to decide which are the three, four or five things they have to do for their communities, if you get lost into huge expectations to do everything to please everybody this is when the Games become a national burden. All these cities have a lot of clarity in their minds about why do they want the Games.

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