06 Aug 2024 Reclaiming the rings: Why Olympic broadcasting rights need a rethink

The 2024 Summer Olympics – or the XXXIII Olympiad – are finally here! Whether you, or I, get to watch any of the games, livestreamed and in full, is a separate issue.

Those of us old enough to remember will recall a time when the Olympics were readily accessible on free-to-air television. The delight of watching one’s country’s Olympians dominate the long-distance races, overlap competitors more than once and sweep the podium, was palpable.

Following the games at no extra cost on live television is a thing of past for many, thanks to that complication called broadcasting rights and the in-country monopoly of rights’ holders.

The financial policy the International Olympic Committee (IOC) adopted four decades ago to increase revenue and diversify resources through sale of broadcasting rights has been so hugely successful that watching the games has become the purview of the privileged few.

According to the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), the sale of broadcasting and media rights is the biggest source of revenue for sports organisations. For the IOC, sales of broadcasting rights accounted for 61% of its USD 7.6 billion revenue during the period 2017–2020/21.

WIPO cites three justifications for broadcasters’ rights: “safeguard costly investments in televising sporting events, recognize and reward the entrepreneurial efforts of broadcasting organizations, and recognize and reward their contribution to diffusion of information and culture.”

That Olympics broadcasting is restricted to select media organisations in each country that in turn exercise control over what content to air and how, is at odds with the IOC’s commitment as stated in Clause 48 of the Olympic Charter to take “all necessary steps in order to ensure the fullest coverage by the different media and the widest possible audience in the world for the Olympic Games.”

Further, the Charter stipulates that “[o]nly those persons accredited as media may act as journalists, reporters or in any other media capacity.” Video clips posted on YouTube by the Olympians themselves or enthusiastic others are deleted as swiftly as they are published.

The IOC’s financial health is important. The current revenue-generation model, however, has created tiers of audiences across and within nations. It has built and continued to reinforce inequalities in access to content particularly in countries where broadcasting rights are unaffordable or infrastructure is inadequate. It has stifled interest in what was once an exciting and unifying once-every-four-years phenomenon. The model is arguably out of touch with the contemporary digital media reality where content creation is as easy as click-and-post.

It is time for the IOC to return to the drawing board, to bring its approach to broadcasting rights in line with its mandate and the Olympic spirit.

Photo: UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport on Flickr, CC BY 2.0, filter added.