This was the greatest summer of sport. Twenty-twelve is, like 1966, a year that will live on in folk memory.
For one media organization, it was an astonishing performance. The BBC provided unparalleled coverage of the Olympics and reaped the reward. With 24 streams of live content from Olympic Park and beyond, the corporation gained a huge number of eyeballs. Read more »
For millions, the realisation of TV when you want it, wherever you want it is fast becoming an everyday reality, writes Richard Lambert, account director at specialist PR consultancy Braben.
Technical innovations from new and established players have caught the imagination of the public this year like no other.
Through the uptake in technology that has enabled us to access video content in new ways and the substantial marketing budgets used to spread the word, a significant and lasting shift in mind-set is almost tangible.
I was lucky enough to visit the Olympic Park a couple of weeks ago during the Olympics. My tickets weren’t for the Olympic stadium, the Velodrome or the Aquatics Centre. No, I was there to watch Handball! Ok, so Handball may not be top of everyone’s list but it gave me a chance to take in the amazing spectacle that is the Olympic games; to walk around the park and to soak up the atmosphere of this once in a lifetime event.
For most of us who work in media, a sad reality is that you also notice ads wherever you go. And this was particularly true of my visit to the Olympic Park. So, what brands had the best poster sites, the best digital billboards or the biggest building wraps? Read more »
At the 2008 Beijing OIympics GB exceeded expectations by finishing 4th in the medal table, just ahead of Germany. According to Ipsos MORI research conducted for UK Sport ahead of the London 2012 Olympic Games the majority of the general public felt that Team GB would do at least as well as in Beijing – with 2 in 5 expecting Great Britain to actually finish higher in the medal table. Given the top 3 nations in 2008 (China, US and Russia) all have populations more than twice the size of ours and GB finished a long way behind 3rd placed Russia (with 47 medals to their 73), this is a tall order – even taking into account the much talked about ‘home advantage’. Read more »
Sports such as gymnastics, athletics and swimming will be hoping that the London 2012 Olympics will provide a shop window to potential sponsors wanting to cash in on the expected success of English sport.
If the likes of UK Athletics can’t convince sponsors of the virtue of sponsoring domestic athletics during the Olympics, then it never will.
That is why it is little surprise that UK Athletics is poised to introduce a new multi-sponsor strategy and end its long-term sponsorship deal with Aviva, up for renewal at the end of the year. Read more »
Just what magnitude of editorial resource are national newspapers designating to the Olympics?
The question is an interesting one, as there is a school of thought that Twitter will be the de facto news feed during the Olympics, gazumping all the hard work undertaken by national newspapers.
Is it just me who is utterly perplexed by the deafening silence that followed the much-publicised letter to Jeremy Hunt, from prospective Local TV licence bidders opposing the government’s Muxco proposal? Why is so much emphasis being placed on the delivery mechanism when local TV should be about deriving revenue from the distribution of engaging, relevant content, not the technology or the platform?
Maybe we need an analogue solution to this digital conundrum. In 1950, 23 European broadcasters got together in a Torquay hotel and laid the foundations of what must be one of the first ever content sharing agreements. Thus the European Broadcasting Union was born – a self-regulating alliance with each member agreeing to provide minimum levels of “free” content and services to the collective – and nothing whatsoever to do with the EU. Using the “virtual” currency of Gold Francs to trade between themselves, membership costs and dividends were subject to a complex but irrefutably fair algorithm that was primarily based on the number of TV sets within each region – in modern day parlance, reach. Read more »
Next year 
could be a difficult one for Sky Sports, I was reminded today by a bigwig at the broadcaster, as its polished presenters will miss out on the two big sporting events of the year: the Olympics and the European Football Championships.
Sky’s sporting juggernuat has temporarily been halted, as the broadcaster has the rights to broadcast neither of these sporting extravaganzas. Read more »
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