Recap of the Olympics
February 27th, 2006 | by Klaus Holzapfel |We like Sports, all kind of sports except the ones we will get like cricket or baseball. We especially like the Olympics. They bring the best athletes from a lot of less popular sports out into the spotlight. There are fantastic performances going on. I used to stay up until 5AM to watch a rowing race in 1990. A have seen Olympic Soccer matches at 2:30AM. In short: I am an Olympic junkie. Marketers should be happy with me.
How many minutes did I watch of this year’s Olympics? None! Total Boycott.
I used to live in Europe where events where shown live. Yes, there were replays. But for the die-hards the events would be broadcast when they were happening. The best athletes would always be shown - no matter which country they were from. The grandmother and the kindergarden teacher of the athletes would not be interviewed.
No what do we have here in the U.S. these days?
Events taking place in the morning, everybody getting the results online and then NBC stepping up to the plate a full 12 or 16 hours later and then presenting these events “Live” at prime time, mixed with tons of useless information and gazillions of commercials? It feels like they are flying in the reels from Europe…
You wonder why the public rather watches “Dancing with the Stars” or some other crappy reality show?
I still don’t get how NBC can spend so much money on the TV rights of a jewel like the Olympics and get it so wrong. Unbelievable.
So far, I could have written almost the same posting four years ago.
There is actually light at the end of the tunnel:
The Financial Times Germany reports today that Vodafone is launching a pilot during this year’s Soccer World Cup (which you will hear more about at this blog).
For the first time a major sports event will be available via telecommunications TV. We don’t know the program details yet but dealers will have updated 3G phones in stores and a new UMTS variant named HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) will be introduced before the summer. The download speed of HSDPA will be up to 1.8 Mb/second at launch and up to 7.2Mb per/second at a later stage.
Now we are talking. So far UMTS has really been disappointing for the telecommunications companies In Europe. If they will be able to provide top content like a Soccer World Cup in a compelling format and do not charge an arm and a leg for it they have something going. Now, that means mobile carriers will have to get two things right.
They still haven’t even started to make the money back they spent on the UMTS licenses.
Sports without tons of commercials and without 15 hour delays anyone?
