Olympic website limits defended

By BBC News Online's internet reporter Mark Ward in Lausanne, Switzerland

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has defended its decision to limit how websites can cover its games by saying the internet audience is simply not big enough to bother with.

The IOC intends to ban all video and audio streaming of the Olympics for 10 years - or until websites can restrict access to content along national boundaries.

Backed by broadcasting partners, the IOC says that television will stay as its preferred method for people to watch the games. The committee says it has a duty to sign deals that put the games in front of the biggest possible audience - and that means television and radio.

Sport of all things in the world was made for interactivity

Peter Sprogis, Prisma Iventures

But the organisations running sports websites are keen to reach a compromise with the IOC that would allow new technology to give fans an enhanced view of the Olympics.

Analysts believe the committee will be doing those fans a great disservice if it continues to ignore the potential of the net

This week members of the International Olympic Committee, new media experts, website editors, lawyers and consultants are meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, to help the IOC decide what it should do about the internet.

So far, the IOC has shunned the net, stopping websites showing video and banning athletes from filing training or competition diaries.

During the recent games in Sydney, French media monitoring firm Datops was hired to ensure no sites violated the terms of the IOC's broadcast-rights agreements with national television and radio organisations.

Limited access

A survey by Datops found that 10% of the 12,000 websites giving daily updates during the games showed offending video clips or made available information that was not authorised.

Dick Pound, chairman of the IOC marketing commission, and the IOC internet working group, said it would be "irresponsible" for the organisation to swap its huge TV audience for the net audience because only a relatively small number of people had access to the web.

Mr Pound said 3.7 billion households tuned into the Sydney games. He was supported by Gary Zenkel from partner NBC which has the rights to show footage in the United States.

"On any given day during the 17 days of the Olympics, about 59 million people were watching the broadcasts," Mr Zenkel said. "But only about 500,000 unique viewers were coming to our website."

Wireless future

However, others at the conference have sounded a warning to the IOC, arguing that a growing audience was calling out for the kinds of interaction that the web, and allied devices such as mobile phones, could provide.

Consumers want conversations not announcements

Rachael Church, sports researcher

Laurie Courage, a director with IBM, which provided hardware support during the Sydney games, said the many official Olympic websites registered a total of 11.3 billion hits - almost double the number expected.

She said the experience taught her that fans were now looking for more than just the broad coverage offered by TV stations. Many wanted a wealth of facts, background information and the ability to tailor the coverage themselves.

She said this trend was only going to continue as people used devices such as smart phones and palm-sized computers to access future wireless networks.

Olympic announcements

By 2005, IBM predicts that the 700 million PCs that people are using to access the internet will be outnumbered by the two billion mobile devices they use to manage their lives and pursue their interests while on the move.

She won support from Rachael Church, author of a respected study called Sport on the Internet. "Consumers want conversations not announcements," she said. "They want to be far more involved in the way that the Olympics are run."

Ms Church said that it should be possible to find a way that preserved national broadcasting rights yet let sports websites do a better job of covering the games.

A survey carried out by sports site Quokka during the Sydney games found that many people were combining their television watching with their surfing of Olympic sites. This confirmed the idea that information gathered from websites is used to tailor TV viewing.

"Sport of all things in the world was made for interactivity," said Peter Sprogis, chief executive of Prisma Iventures. It is pioneering the Worldzap service which will beam clips of events, be they sport or music related, to subscribers.