So Far, So Good For Olympic Channel

(ATR) The general manager of the Olympic Channel tells Around the Rings that figures show the channel is reaching its target audience in the first three months of being live.

Mark Parkman was speaking to ATR at the World Rugby Confex at London’s Hilton Metropole when he outlined the success the Olympic Channel has had so far since being launched at the closing ceremony of the Rio 2016 Olympics.

The goal of the Olympic Channel, available online, is to help promote interest in the Games outside of major events and particularly among a young audience. Parkman said that so far, the channel was reaching its target demographic.

"We’re pleased with what we’ve done in just three months," Parkman said. "Where we have been very successful in our opinion is in growing the social media engagement for the Olympics. We started on July 27th on social which was coinciding with when we announced that we were going to have the launch at the closing ceremony. We had zero social followers – we’re now above 2 million.

"We have got more than 300 million video views, we’ve had more than a billion impressions across social, we’ve grown the YouTube Olympic channel by almost 23 percent. So when you measure those metrics, we’re quite pleased."

The channel has long been an aim for International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach, and it was approved by members as part of the recommendations in the Agenda 2020 review.

Based out of Madrid, the channel has been able to cooperate with international federations to stream live events and give them promotion in certain territories they might not have had before.

This comes in especially handy when looking towards Tokyo and the new sports that will feature in 2020. Parkman said that the channel has already shown sports bodies that it can be a showcase for them if they want to test out new features.

He said: "We have agreements with those new sports, we’re already streaming some of their content live, we’re engaging with them on content creation and that’s part of what we want to do.

"[A] good example of what we’re doing on that younger demographic is our work with FIBA. FIBA for their big events have worldwide distribution, but we engage with them for their 3x3 product for the world championships and their world tour finals.

"So we’re helping all the sports if they want to introduce new disciplines. If they want to try out new formats, the channel can be a way they can engage and get distribution for that to see how it plays."

A big test for the Olympic channel will come with the next big event in the calendar which is the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang in 2018.

Written by Christian Radnedgein London

For general comments or questions,click here.

25 Years at #1: Your best source of news about the Olympics is AroundTheRings.com, for subscribers only.