Media coverage and communication of the Olympic Games / by Emilio Fernández Peña

Fernández Peña, Emilio

Edited by The Olympic Studies Centre - 2024

The Olympic Games and the media have had a very close and symbiotic relationship since the first Olympic Congress in Paris in 1894, serve as vehicles for the dissemination of culture, and are the main source of funding for the Olympic Movement. Relationships between the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Olympic Games communication stakeholders, such as broadcasters, sponsors, and audiences, are built around an interrelated system of positive feedback. In order to achieve audience success on television, it has been seen as crucial to offer content that appeals to both male and female audiences. A model has been established since the Munich 1972 Olympic Games to meet that objective. IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch launched the successful model of broadcast rights management. His successor, Jacques Rogge, introduced several changes that linked the promotion of Olympic culture to broadcast rights agreements, and Thomas Bach, who succeeded Rogge in his tenure, has combined the best of both previous models to ensure the financial stability of the Olympic Movement in the medium term. The basis of new media, such as social media, is the conversation between users, and between users and organisations. Thus, the form of top-down communication characteristic of the traditional media has been broken. The production of the Olympic Games for television is a detailed preparation process that begins six years prior to the event and ends two days before the opening ceremony with the dress rehearsals. All the content offered by the IOC Olympic Channel is conceived from scratch, with a comprehensive and holistic approach from a communicative viewpoint: for television, for YouTube, for social media. The communications strategy of an organisation like the IOC, and of the Olympic Games and its culture, has gone from the fragmentation of platforms, actors, and organisations to a clear trend towards convergence and unity. This article addresses the communication of the Olympic Games and underscores the fundamental role of such communication in constructing Games that are truly global. Television production, broadcast rights management, and the audiences of the Games are the key topics of this paper. Lastly, the role of the Olympic Channel and its content creation and audience interaction logic are analysed.

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