Geneva, 18 August: The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) is announcing a number of initiatives aimed at providing additional content access to sports fans around Europe. On top of more than 12,000 hours of TV coverage scheduled across the Eurovision territories, broadcasters are providing both live and deferred moving images of the Games over both broadband Internet and mobile platforms.
For the first time ever, and to complement comprehensive TV footage, European Internet users with broadband connections have widely available access to both live and on-demand video footage of the Olympic Games.
Pan-European broadband Internet users are able to watch at a time of their choosing, a selection of live and highlight packages freely available on a number of broadcaster web sites. Broadcasters showing broadband content will include ARD and ZDF (Germany); DR (Denmark); DRS, TSR and TSI (Switzerland); ERT (Greece); SVT (Sweden), BBC (United Kingdom), NPB (Netherlands) NRK (Norway) and CanalPlus (France). Four days into the Games and broadband Internet users in over 30 European countries have experienced moving image services.
To ensure that the IOC-acquired rights are adhered to, the EBU is using the latest geo-location and Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies to ensure that European Internet users have access to a full range of both on-demand and live new media services.
Following wide-ranging sublicensing and cooperation agreements with European mobile operators, for the first time, European mobile subscribers can complement their TV viewing by accessing moving image clips over their mobiles. In addition to broadcaster WAP sites, a number of European mobile operators are offering moving image content packages in Slovenia, the United Kingdom, Slovakia, Poland, Switzerland, Spain and Italy. Moving image Olympic content is also available over the latest generation 3G networks, notably in Denmark, Sweden and Greece.
With these initiatives the EBU is demonstrating its ability to provide state-of-the-art services to the widest possible audience, complementing extensive TV coverage together with access over new media platforms.
Further information:
Marc Jörg, Eurovision Sports Acquisition, tel +41 22 717 2811 – joerg@eurovision.net
Morand Fachot, EBU Communications Service, tel: +41 22 717 2034 – fachot@ebu.ch