IBC
In its first Summer Olympic Games since
merging in 2022 Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) is preparing for what it believes
is the most unique broadcast operation of any rights holder from Paris.
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Like other broadcasters it is promising
to deliver all 3800 hours of live competition that host agency OBS will
produce, but unlike, say NBC, it will tailor it into 19 languages across 47
markets.
"That would arguably be what sets
us apart from any other broadcasters,” says Scott Young, Group SVP, Content,
Production and Business Operations at WBD Sports, Europe. “The principal idea
is how do you create a plug and play dynamic platform that isn't wedded to any
one studio or any particular camera which is only for that market. How do you
make it work across 47 markets?”
Recent Olympics covered by Discovery on
Eurosport featured the XR studio Cube which was used to ‘teleport’ athletes
into studio presentation. That’s ditched this time around in favour of being
“immersive around the city and around the sports, closer to the athletes.”
Young explains, “The Cube studio was
particularly useful when the Games were in Pyeongchang, Tokyo and Beijing;
Challenging time zones, remote locations and two of those in winter and one in
the Pandemic where accessibility and portability has been a challenge if not
extremely restricted.”
“Paris ‘24 is a very different style of
production. We're using an on-base, in-venue closeness to the athletes and the
story. We've taken a very clear production plan to be on the ground rather than
to be in a technical environment.”
There’s also less need for a virtual
and remote production technique from Paris given that this is also the
headquarters of Eurosport.
It has created a single host
destination called WBD House on the rooftop of the 5 star Hôtel Raphael,
emblematic of Roaring Twenties Parisian glamour, near the Arc de Triomphe
with views along the Trocadéro.
On the rooftop are four multicam
studios, three stand-up positions (including one for WBD news channel CNN) and
remote RF cameras.
“This will create an environment where
we can tell the story of the Olympic Games into a single market environment
(studio) and transform that into a multi-market rooftop where guests,
celebrities and experts can move from country to country.”
He elaborates, “A main host set
can move from one ‘country’ to another. At the flick of a switch we can make
that work in the UK, in France, or in Norway. It’s a truly immersive
broadcasting experience and location that serves a very unique broadcasting
platform like ours.”
Continuing, Young says, “Any one of our
four studio locations could do a breakfast show in the UK and half an hour
later it could do a mid-morning program in Sweden, half an hour later again it
could be a France mid-afternoon program. We are dropping in different talent
and leaving the technology the same.”
“So rather than building out individual
studios for every market, which would be an astronomical undertaking, and
frankly, not really necessary, we've created a dynamic environment where we can
move the technology around to suit a particular market.”
In addition, WBD has live stand-up and
studio presentations at different ‘houses’ located across Paris. Houses are run
by each country’s local organising committee and are open to the public.
“Some of our markets also have studios
local to them where they've kept presenters and experts back at base. That
means they don't solely rely on operating hours in Paris. We have many
commentators operating remotely as well as on-site and we have interviewers in
every location at every mix zone for every sport.”
Most of these interviewers are
multilingual so they can chat to athletes irrespective of their
nationality and language. This content is then distributed through WBD’s single
media platform to every market.
WBD is able to draw on the resources of
stable mate TNT Sports in Atlanta to create elements such as longer form
highlights reels, short bumpers and teasers and emotive clips. These are routed
back to Europe for local editorial teams build programming (WBD not having
rights to the Olympics in North America).
“We have a 20-strong editing team
working in Atlanta,” Young says. “Once competition finishes each night,
there'll be cutting clips and sending them back into the central server so when
every market wakes up in the morning they'll be able to draw down a series of
content that's been edited by a team of people who are very focused on selling
sport.”
A number of producers, directors and
reporters normally based in Atlanta will be on-site in Paris assisting with WBD
production on the ground.
“The shorter form content is for our
web, app and social teams. Longer format reviews and previews will be used in
breakfast programs. Our teams across Europe will wake up each morning able to
choose different title sequences already pre-edited.”
“It’s a really powerful resource that
produces a lot of sports content in the US that we're able to turn to our
advantage of the Olympic Games here. The relevance of this is not lost on
the fact that the next Olympics are in Los Angeles.”
Unlike OBS, the broadcaster is not
using AI in its editing operation. “We don't have a need for that. We’ve yet to
truly flesh out how AI is going to benefit the way in which we tell the story
of live sport and of an athlete competing. I don't think it's too far off, and
I'm quite sure AI will have a much more impactful role at LA '28, but AI is not
a driving force of technology for us at Paris 2024.”
A key feature for WBD on Discovery+ and
Max are timeline markers and event alerts for 12 sports. These will allow users
to navigate to the points in the action that they wish to view.
“Whether you're on X or Instagram the
alerts will remind you that a key moment like a Gold medal has taken place,”
Young says. “You can then go to that stream, click on the timeline marker, and
find that moment without scrolling through hours of broadcast. I think that's a
fairly revolutionary way of hopping around sports, for those that are a
multi-sport viewer rather than wedded to a single sport.”
The main Eurosport channel will air
Olympics action in UHD 4K HDR but this format will not be made available on its
streaming services. Bandwidth being the main issue; also that viewing UHD HDR
on mobile devices is problematic outside of everyone having cheap 5G plans.
“We would probably have significant
issues if we tried to do the full fat version across every sport live on a
streaming platform,” Young says.
“We will broadcast HDR for certain
sports but we took the decision a while ago with the streaming team that UHD
across every feed was not going to be the product that would set us apart from
the competition. Our proposition is in making sure we broadcast every sport,
live and letting an audience choose what they want to watch, when they want to
watch. That was more of a priority than broadcasting UHD.”
Young says WBD has worked closely with
OBS since Tokyo to ensure it gets the innovations it wants.
“We spent a lot of time talking with
OBS about making sure that innovation does flow through and I think what they
have presented to us and all rights holders is a pretty extraordinary package
of coverage for Paris 2024.”
The broadcaster began seeding coverage
of the Games a year ago its Road to Paris 2024 programming. A number of other
programs have been released or about about to be released that further behind
the scenes awareness of an athlete’s journey.
Like OBS, WBD is keenly aware of
guiding fans through the rules and performances of sports that may only see the
light every four years.
The traditional Olympic sports of
athletics or boxing are fairly well known but there's an array of more niche
sports that only get the mainstream spotlight at an Olympics.
Take breaking (break dancing), which
debuted at the 2018 Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires, and makes the leap up
to elite sport for Paris 24. How does s the audience understand whether the
athlete has achieved good or great results.
“That's where a combination of
different camera angles, graphics and different explainers will really help our
audience through 17 days of competition,” Young says.
Breaking is a subjective, artistic
discipline so WBD Sports so will have experts on hand to introduce these
artists to a sports audience and explain how judges came to a decision.”
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