(ATR) Current and former TV executives say the new IOC deal with Eurosport will have a profound effect on how the Olympics are seen on the continent.
"The BBC’s relationship with the Games, which goes back almost to the founding of the corporation, will inevitably be less rich," said Roger Mosey, BBC director for London 2012, in an op ed for The Guardian.
"That is a shame for audiences, though my friends at the BBC are saying that they will still try to maintain the Olympic link as best they can."
Jan de Jong, the chief executive of Netherlands Olympic broadcaster NOS, called the deal an "enormous blow" when talking to DutchNews.
On Monday, Eurosport and Discovery paid the IOC $1.4 billion for the rights to broadcast the Games across Europe for four Olympics - PyeongChang 2018, Tokyo 2020, and the 2022 Winter and 2024 Summer Olympics.
"This outcome is not, I think, just a function of the size of the license fee," said Mosey. "The fact is that public service broadcasters the world over are losing key rights to the soaraway inflation caused by pay TV."
He went on to point out that fees for events like English Premier League matches are far beyond the budget of a public broadcaster like the BBC.
Some countries, like England, have laws to keep the Olympics on free television. Sub-licensing deals are expected to be hammered out in several countries.
Mosey says sports should be more of a priority for the BBC.
"The corporation needs to fight as hard for its reputation in sport as it is currently doing in music and the arts. I sometimes found the BBC Trust less sympathetic to sport than they should been, given its manifest value to viewers and listeners."
Written by Nick Devlin
20 Years at #1: Your best source of news about the Olympics is AroundTheRings.com, for subscribers only.
Recent Articles
Sinner-Alcaraz, the duel that came to succeed the three phenomenons
Beyond the final result, Roland Garros left the feeling that the Italian and the Spaniard will shape the great duel that came to help us through the duel for the end of the Federer-Nadal-Djokovic era.
Table tennis: Brazil’s Bruna Costa Alexandre will be Olympic and Paralympic in Paris 2024
She is the third in her sport and the seventh athlete to achieve it in the same edition; in Santiago 2023 she was the first athlete with disabilities to compete at the Pan American level and won a medal.
Rugby 7s: the best player of 2023 would only play the medal match in Paris
Argentinian Rodrigo Isgró received a five-game suspension for an indiscipline in the circuit’s decisive clash that would exclude him until the final or the bronze match; the Federation will seek to make the appeal successful.
Rhonex Kipruto, owner of the world record for the 10000 meters on the road, was suspended for six years
The Kenyan received the maximum sanction for irregularities in his biological passport and the Court considered that he was part of a system of “deliberate and sophisticated doping” to improve his performance. He will lose his record and the bronze medal at the Doha World Cup.
Katie Ledecky spoke about doping Chinese swimmers: “It’s difficult to go to Paris knowing that we’re going to compete with some of these athletes”
The American, a seven-time Olympic champion, referred to the case of the 23 positive controls before the Tokyo Games that were announced a few weeks ago and shook the swimming world. “I think our faith in some of the systems is at an all-time low,” he said.
