Net gains for a net games

The net is changing our view of the world

By BBC News Online internet reporter Mark Ward

Like many organisations, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has been caught out by the rise of the internet.

During the late 1990s, the IOC signed deals with many national broadcasters giving them exclusive rights to TV coverage within their territories.

At the time these deals were done, few could have predicted just how significant the internet would become.

And while the real world hailed Sydney as "the best games ever", the virtual world lost out to television interests that refused to allow audio and video of events to be streamed online.

Net gains

In 1996, The IOC signed a 12-year, $705m (£470m) deal with NBC, making the US TV company the exclusive broadcaster for the games in the USA until 2008.

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"At that point, no-one had cottoned on to how important digital rights negotiation was going to be and nothing was done about it," said Caroline Sceats, a media analyst at Forrester Research.

But that might change soon. "I cannot see that they are going to be able to shut out interactive coverage, and I do not see why they would want to," she said.

For this Olympiad, though, the IOC shut the net out. Websites were banned from showing audio or video clips of the games, and athletes were prevented from writing diaries for sports sites.

The IOC even employed French firm Datops to police sports websites to ensure they were not breaking the rules.

Quality stream

It seemed to work, and the only people who suffered in a major way were the editors and journalists working on the sports sites who were on the receiving end of phone calls from Datops.

For its part, the IOC said it had inconvenienced few people by banning online video footage.

"The quality of video broadcast over the internet is not very high," said Caspar Moller, director of business development in Europe for Quokka, which ran the NBC Olympics website. "Why I would want to watch that instead of flick on the TV, I don't know,"

There are few people around the world with a broadband web connection that can support broadcast-quality video. Jupiter Research estimates only about one million people worldwide surf the web via such a link. This is a fraction of those with televisions.

Internet ironies

In the US, more than 111 million tuned in for the first Sunday of the games. Around the world, the number of viewers would have been in the billions.

However, despite the current preference among viewers to watch their sport on TVs, there is no doubt fear of the internet was one of the reasons that NBC refused to let video footage go on the web.

Quite naturally, NBC needed to recover some of the cost of its bumper 12-year deal with the IOC by selling advertising slots between sports programmes at premium prices. It could not have done this if the audience had turned off or failed to tune in because they had already seen the races run on the web hours before.

What was funny was NBC's refusal to broadcast live any events on TV because of the time differences between Australia and the US. Its policy of showing only recorded highlights actually turned the games into an important net event.

Anyone wanting to get up-to-the-minute information, particularly for low-profile events, had little choice but to turn to the web for information.

Web watchers

Such a situation is unlikely to happen again - in future games, the internet will be a central participant.

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Mr Moller expects the first changes to be in evidence at the Winter Olympics, due to be held in Salt Lake City in 2002. The IOC is organising a conference in December to debate what should happen to the internet rights.

Certainly by 2002, many more people will have broadband net connections, and it will be harder to argue that the audience is too small to serve and that nothing novel can be offered to them.

By the Athens games in 2004, the dividing line between TV and the net is likely to be very fine and no broadcaster will be able to ignore those watching via web.

As Quokka and many other sports websites are keen to emphasise, the internet gives them far more freedom than is available to a traditional TV broadcaster.

Interactive future

"The viewers are at the mercy of what the TV companies want to show," said Chris Todd, a media analyst at Jupiter Research. "The internet changes the model around. In theory, users can go online and choose their own programming."

Mr Todd said the IOC was keen to engender enthusiasm in its audience and one way was to allow them to control what they saw.

This interaction is something that Quokka is keen to exploit. It is currently negotiating to fix sensors to top athletes such as Michael Johnson, so viewers can see what happens to the stars' heart rates, breathing and what speeds they reach during a race.

Mr Moller from Quokka said it was working hard to educate the IOC about the potential for innovation and change. He denied being frustrated by the IOC's stance this time round but added: "There are so many more things that we would like to do."

But the final argument that will drive change is money. The IOC may have signed a very lucrative deal with NBC, and many other broadcasters, but really that is only the start.

Forrester expects the internet revenues from the Athens games to be in excess of $200m (£135m) and to grow from there. There may be no prizes for coming second in this contest.