YouTube has nabbed the rights to show the London 2012 Olympic Games live on the site. Unfortunately only in the 64 countries in which the IOC failed to secure a deal with any of the local broadcasters.
Live Streaming Olympics
With 100 days to go until the London 2012 Olympics NBC took the wraps off its new website, giving enough time for the hype to build and visitor numbers to climb, or so it hopes. All events will be streamed live on the site for U.S. cable and satellite viewers. Which is an improvement over the diabolical situation of 2008.
Now, with 50 days to go, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has announced a deal that will see the whole of the London 2012 Olympics stream live on the Google-owned site. But only for those in certain countries across Africa and Asia.
London 2012 On YouTube
The 64 countries that will have access to the YouTube live streaming are those where the online rights to the event have not already been acquired by another party. This includes India, Singapore, Nigeria, and Kenya.
All the coverage will be free and available in HD. There will be 11 channels, 10 of which will be covering the 32 events, the other playing host to the 24-hour Olympic News Channel. All in all there will be 2,200 hours of coverage, with the all the finals in which medals can be won guaranteed to be shown.
YouTube isn’t willing to share the financial details of the deal, but it could have been a costly acquisition. To put it in context NBC paid $2 billion for the rights to the 2010 winter games and 2012 summer games.
Conclusions
is now no longer a stranger to live-streaming events, having tested the waters with sports tournaments and music festivals over the past couple of years. But London 2012 will be the biggest event to date, and by quite a margin. This signals another move towards professional content for the site once famed only for videos of cute cats.
[Via Reuters]
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