After 2 members of the committee being pressured into stepping down, the composer last week and finally the ceremony director yesterday
I'll watch it. But this games is compromised in just about every way with so many missing athletes due to the pandemic and of course no crowds. It's already going to be one of the worst Olympics ever and it's barely got started.
It will be rubbish with empty stadiums. I will miss the athletes asking the crowd to clap in rhythm to make them jump further.
Yeah the athletics is where the crowds will be most missed along with any arena events like the cycling. Most of the water based events will look alright without crowds but much of the event will suffer badly.
Can’t believe that purple octopus shagged all them Japanese girls dressed in school uniforms at the opening ceremony
Shame for the home athletes too.... Missing out on the experience of competing in front of home fans. Let's just hope it goes off without too many issues... Doesn't help us here that it's late night/early morning and the BBC have got reduced coverage because Euro sport/Discovery have more of the rights now.
Is that a permanent thing or have they just stepped back this time because of the time difference meaning it wasn't worth them spending so much money on? I thought the Olympics was one of those events that is ring fenced to have to be on terrestrial TV like the World Cup?
Seems so . Got this replay on Twitter: “Yes, Discovery offered the @Olympics an unbelievable $1 billion to do a land grab. It's a pan European deal, local country broadcasters like BBC didn't even get a say in the negotiations” So did I or certainly a majority of it but guess money talks.
Yeah I've done some googling and it looks like the BBC are still showing live coverage every day, just their wings have been clipped in terms of their wider on demand offering. In the last 2 Olympics they've shown lots of simultaneous live streams of events away from the main broadcast on BBC One with lots of on demand content too. This time the BBC are only allowed two live feeds so they can show their traditional continuous broadcast on BBC One along with one live stream on the red button. But they can't do the wide range of multi sport streams and extensive on demand coverage that they did in the past. That part seems to have moved over to eurosport. So the experience from a BBC point of view will be more like the traditional linear TV coverage we remember from the 90s with less choice to change sport if you're not interested in what they're showing on the main broadcast. But all the main Olympic moments like the athletics, 100m final, British medal hopes etc will still be shown live on the BBC it doesn't look like they've been told they can't broadcast certain events. As with everything these days, its all about pushing the new Discovery + subscription streaming service as Discovery are Eurosport's parent company. I do feel that these subscription services are reaching saturation point and I struggle to see what Discovery + will offer to make you want to subscribe. Discovery was always one of those channels that you sometimes watched but you only had because it came bundled as part of a wider TV package. You'd never have paid an additional one off subscription to get their channels. Even with the additional sport coverage from Eurosport I think it seems a bit of a stretch. Media companies need to be careful with all these competing subscription services because if on demand content becomes too fragmented and split across too many different subscriptions, it will get too expensive and will push people towards illegal services where you'll be able to get content from all different providers on a single service for a fraction of the price. There are a lot of very good, reliable IPTV services out there now that have huge content libraries, loads of live TV including premium sport all for a cheap annual subscription. They're very difficult to shut down and can change servers whenever they need to. If people get pushed into them and they discover the cheapness and reliable service that isn't too far below the legal services, it'll be difficult to get them back again.
The minor sports we only see once in a while won't be too happy about the lack of exposure I suspect but of course money talks doesn't it! BBC will have the main events on as you say in the athletics and cycling.
The minor sports with British interest will still get a decent amount of coverage I suspect. But those sports without British participation, or where the British interest underachieves and goes out early, will pretty much get buried. I have Eurosport as part of my Virgin TV package. I'm trying to find out if that gives me any access to the on demand stuff because from what I've seen so far I'll need to pay the Discovery + subscription which I'm not prepared to do.
