Since 2014, Olympic wrestling (UWW) has completely revised its TV production and distribution policy.
Dominique Curchod, Head of Television at UWW, works closely with the President, the General Secretary and Commercial and Communications Director to utilise the statistics from the previous years. The goal is to understand the real interest of broadcasters, that is which images from the supplied productions are actually used. New media also needs to be integrated.
Up to 2015, UWW produced and distributed a total of six key events per year, using substantial broadcast resources and worldwide satellite distribution.
However, by analysing the data over the years, Dominique Curchod Communication and United World Wrestling realised that the most requested events were always the European and World Championships, while World Cups, notwithstanding substantial efforts, were more successful when distributed as summaries or news items than as live events.
In addition, some other interesting events like Junior or continental championships did not get enough coverage.
An ‘iconoclastic’ solution was envisaged for 2016: reduce the TV coverage for 4 out of 6 events, ensuring live streaming coverage but only producing highlights and news in HD broadcast quality. This reduction in coverage made it possible to allocate some of the budget to continental events, Junior championships, etc, for a total of 10 or 11 covered events. Only 2 events remained ‘fully broadcast’ but there were 8 or 9 more with images from the finals with which to create good highlights and daily news. Production and programming thus grew by 120% in horizontal terms (number of events).
The evolution of digital media resulted in a strong demand for online streaming for these events, and a solution was sought for 2017. SNG satellite broadcast was much too costly. Thus we found Eurovision's Flex technology, which allows the transmission of HD images using the public Internet. We decided to use this system to show not just the finals, but also some qualifiers for each event, thus increasing production and distribution in vertical terms (2016-17 growth: 200%).
The HD broadcast signal produced is routed via the Internet to a UWW TV studio in Geneva (HTR). The production team works with on-site editing and a remote studio in Switzerland, allowing the distribution of daily news items, not just on results (international news) but also, for the first time, on nationally focused subjects, edited for each participating country: this allows the distribution of pre-edited content for social media and the websites of national newspapers, radios and TV stations. The distribution platform is user-friendly and easy to access (mediapool.scoopa.com
• Events produced in 2015: 6
• Live broadcast hours in 2015: 65
• Number of news items distributed in 2015:
• Events produced in 2016: 10
• Live broadcast hours in 2016: 80
• Number of news items distributed in 2016: 24
• Events produced in 2017: 11
• Live broadcast hours in 2017: 230
• Number of news items distributed in 2017: 55
What is really amazing is that this evolution happened with no increase in budget. But between 2014 and 2017, revenues from TV rights have increased fivefold.
For more details contact:
Dominique Curchod
P +44 207 692 4837
F +44 207 681 1362
M +44 79 3797 8650
M +41 848 803 246
Dominique Curchod Communication
207, Regent Street, 3rd Floor
LONDON W1B3HH