For the first time in Olympic history, there will be complete global online coverage of the events. And major broadcasters such as NBC and BBC, technology providers like Adobe and Microsoft and content networks like Google's Youtube are all getting ready for the online battle.The Athens 2004 Olympics broke all global TV viewing records with near 4 billion unique people watching the games at least once, and a cumulative audience at around 40 billion. Online broadcast coverage was only available to a few territories at the time.
Beijing 2008 may manage wrest away the title of most watched Olympic games, especially thanks to being celebrated in the world's most populated country, but it will surely be difficult to beat the Athens television global audience due to the fierce competition provided by online streaming video.
In the U.S., NBC is said to offer more than 2,000 hours of live video coverage and 3,000 hours of on-demand video on its website. This same channel played an innovative role streaming a live hockey game during the 2006 Winter Games in Torino - this year online viewers will have the chance to follow up to 20 simultaneous live streams.
NBC will be backed by Microsoft's Silverlight technology to deliver the online multimedia content while Adobe Flash and Flex - Silverlight's main competitors - will be used by CCTV.com, the owner of the online video rights to the 2008 Beijing Olympics for mainland China and Macau, after both companies reached an agreement yesterday.
BBC holds the exclusive rights for the Olympics content in the UK and will bring daily highlights to its iPlayer service.
Google is also hungry to eat its piece of Olympic cake, and Youtube has managed to get the rights for online video coverage of the event in the 77 territories that aren't officially covered by Olympic sponsors.
There is no doubt that television will fight hard for its supremacy, and Beijing 2008 will also be the first high-definition Olympics. Those households that own a HD-ready television will be able to feel as though they are up close and personal with those primed athletes ready to give their all in the hope of glory.
The increasing popularity of streaming video combined with the expectations raised by the Beijing Games will boost web traffic and threats to flood many corporate networks. IT managers: you may want to consider to implement Zscaler, a new perspective of web filtering cloud-based and with extremely granular controls over how the network can be used. Employees: please don't hate us!
