The Paris Olympics are in their second week and SVG was able to sit down with Yiannis Exarchos, OBS, CEO and reflect on the effort to get the Games going, the innovations, the changes in storytelling, the challenges around gender equality, and much more. Below is the interview which was conducted on Monday, August. 5.
We are now into week two but what is your impression of how things have gone so far here in Paris?
My impressions are very good because, first of all, we see the impact of the games and the reception of the games worldwide. That’s the most important thing. We see record viewership around the world, and this is everywhere. I mean, it’s not just in Europe, obviously you would expect that with the time zone. But in the United States and Canada and Brazil, and the same in Asia as in Asia we are seeing similar ratings to what they had in Tokyo.
Yiannis Exarchos, OBS, CEO, in the OBS production gallery.
So, it’s very, very clear that these games register as extremely successful games and from a media point of view, there are many reasons for that. First of all, I think that the vision that France had for these games was amazing. I was one of the big supporters of this vision of bringing the games into the city. And this is an incredible city also from a point of view of using it as a vector for sports. Having the opening ceremony right in the heart of the city, bringing urban sports in Place de la Concorde, and other things I think this has created an infectious atmosphere around the city, especially coming after two games which took place during the pandemic. Here it’s very clear that people want to overdo it on the side of having a great time and having a true festival of sports. And I also think that precisely because the world has entered into a phase of some new concerns and new conflicts and new divisions in the world, I think that deep down everybody around the world is trying to make an emotional statement that we still can live together. And the best platform for that is the Olympic Games and the best athletes in the world.
And the good thing is that I feel that we were very prepared at OBS and the broadcasters to really capture that.
How have you done that?
The way we do it is of course, based on the tradition of trying to create the best possible coverage for the sports. But I think that we went the extra mile in trying to convey the emotions of the games and what is different in our times. And I think that we are lucky because now we have technologies that can help us a lot in trying to do that. And we use those technologies not to showcase technology, but to use the tools to help us tell the story in a more compelling and more exciting way.
How are things different than previous Games from that standpoint?
First of all, the sheer size and diversity of the content we produce. We are producing here in Paris 11,000 hours of content and about 3,800 of those are competitions. So, we produce all of that extra content in recognition of the fact that content today is consumed in different ways by different people or different ways even by the same people in different moments in their daily life. And what we wanted to ensure is that people around the world are really enveloped by the Olympic reality throughout their 24 hours, whether they go to work in the morning and they look at their mobile phone, whether they’re in the office and they pretend that they’re working but working on their laptop, the games or when they go back home and have a more relaxing time and watch on a big screen. We wanted the games to be present everywhere, but also with the narrative that fits each specific way of distributing, whether it’s streaming, whether it’s mobile, whether it’s social and so on.
Also, we’re doing much more production which provides more access to the athletes and their emotions, and we produce more content behind the scenes, the preparation of the athletes, and the reactions among the athletes themselves when they warm up, when they train. And all that is facilitated by technology as we have cameras which are not so intrusive, and reliable, 5G transmissions.
And we also wanted a beautiful photogenic background, so we decided to push very much the envelope in using cinematic lenses as television lenses and film lenses have started to merge. And because of that we have an opportunity to use narrative techniques that filmmakers traditionally use. And some of them have a lot to do with expressing better the emotions, the way you film humans against the background and so on.
And the spectators came in the millions and their interaction with the athletes is incredible. So, when you capture that with these lenses the production moves beyond the traditional coverage of sports. And then we’ve been working with different facets of AI for things that go both in front of the camera and behind as well as things like 360 replays that has not happened in most sports. But now the quality of the 360 images is really compatible with UHD HDR coverage and that is not easy to achieve. But, most importantly, the turnaround times allow the directors to use the 360 replays as a third replay during the live cut. Or they can use the stroboscopic enhancements, especially in sports like diving and gymnastics where the movements of human body are incredible, to help people see to what is really happening.
So, I’m assuming you watched the men’s hundred meters the other night. That to me seemed like a perfect example of what you are talking about given the way that race ended with such a close finish. What was going through your mind as you watched how that unfolded?
Usually, we do not spend a lot of time congratulating each other because of everything that’s happening but that night was a moment when I told Mark Wallace, our chief content officer, that it was a perfect alignment of all the things we have been trying to do. And it worked smooth as a silk. It was exciting, it was emotional, and it was the most anticipated moment of the games. And I think that we used all the tools in a way that was also respectful of the competition. It’s not about us showing off and saying, look at this cool tool. Everything was relevant to the story as we’re explaining what happened, showed who won, and explained why. We used the graphics to explain that in an extremely tight race, and we used the 360 degrees, which was impressive. And there was also a little bit of beauty as at the end of it, we went through a helicopter shot with the backdrop of the sun going down on Paris, adding an element of a moment in time. Even the sunset mixed very well with our ending animation, which has a similar sunset.
And then there was another epic moment in the men’s cycling race when the rider stopped on the finish line, got off his bike, turned it sideways, and your cameraperson pulled back to show the Eiffel Tower.
It took years of planning to be there below the Eiffel Tower and while the important thing is the athlete if we have the opportunity to zoom out and put it in the context of the Eiffel Tower it becomes unique moment for the athlete himself. He could have easily just finished the race, but he was like, I’m going to make this a moment and that is the uniqueness of the Olympics, which is something that comes from ancient, ancient Greece, which is the unity of space, time and people. All these things, all these three elements unite in a unique moment in space and time. This is what we mean that we want to have the city being an actor and part of this Olympic moment for the athletes which is the moment in their lives. On Sunday Novak Djokovic was crying like a baby after he won, and he is a very tough athlete with a strong mentality. And we had to prepare ourselves to capture that because it’s not just another tennis story.
And Scottie Scheffler had a similar moment after winning gold in golf.
Yes, for us it’s fundamental that we recognize that it’s not enough just to cover the sport in a perfect way. You need to unlock through the images and the narrative, what is so special about the Olympic games because many of the Olympic viewers are not sports fans or they’re at least not hardcore fans. So, it’s important to make the sports accessible to viewers who do not necessarily know the sport as this is the first time for a whole generation to get to know what an Olympic sport is. So, we need to cover it for people who are in the mood to understand, to listen, to feel emotions, to see the beauty and get into the sports through that.
There was a time during previous games where the debate would be about whether if you gave viewers the live event, they would not tune in later to watch it during Primetime. But all of the broadcasters I have spoken to say they have both amazing live viewership and amazing non-live viewership. So, what is going on? Were we wrong to have that debate?
I must say that I was a little bit of contrarian on that front. We started doing some digital production back in Beijing in 2008 and Facebook did not exist. Then in Sochi we created our first digital video player at the time when it was very difficult for broadcasters to stream on their platforms. We said they will not build a huge infrastructure simply to carry all the feeds of the games for 17 days, so we need to help them, and we build a white label solution, which has progressed a lot. Why? Because we have been huge believers that digital, for an event like the Olympics where you want to give ultimate accessibility, is a great tool.
So, I didn’t believe that it was a zero-sum game and that if you see it here, you will not go and consume it there and so on. I was almost convinced that you may watch something exciting live and then you want more. You want to see the reaction again, to watch a different angle, to see a different perspective and that also drives our desire and decision to produce so much diverse content.
Also, today everybody’s convinced you need to be banging the drum throughout the day, 24 by seven. And to do that, you really need to use all possible media. Of course, you need to be structured about how you go about monetizing that and there are still gaps. But there’s no doubt in my mind that with an event like this you have to be present everywhere all the time.
And that is also for the period between the Olympics and one of the reasons IOC President Thomas Bach and OBS started the whole adventure of the digital strategy of the IOC, the creation of the Olympic Channel, and then expanding into olympics.com. We clearly identified that it’s great that people come to the Olympics every two or four years, and the Olympics remains a huge brand, but most of the Olympic sports suffer a lot in between. How can we extend the aura of the Olympics and all these Olympic sports outside of the Olympics in what we call the flame-to-flame period. Olympics.com has become one of the largest sports platforms in the world, carrying all the sports, not just the two or three commercial sports, and 52% of the content is devoted to women’s sports and following the Olympic brand, the Olympic ideas, the Olympic values.
And speaking with a lot of the rights holders here one of the consistent threads is storytelling in a different way, which in some ways was born of things like Drive to Survive or Full Swing, shows where the competition is secondary.
It’s not the storytelling in sports that we used to have 20 or 25 years ago, but it’s still storytelling because storytelling is a universal for humans as we have developed genetically to recognize and crave storytelling. It helps us solve problems as humans are problem-solving machines and problem solving is very much related to the capacity of humans to tell stories and to listen to stories. And this is where all humans react and react in a positive way.
The technical challenge of the Olympics is huge, but another challenge is the incredible density and complexity of the event itself. So many things are happening and so much content is being created and there is so much competition. And this is where we feel an obligation at OBS to help broadcast as much ready-made content as we can.
And it’s not just the linear coverage of the sport, it’s all the extra content that we need to provide to help all the countries and sports. And this is where technology helps us to be so much more efficient. We now have an AI-generated highlights platform with Intel that we are using for the first time where the rights holder can customize the highlights. They choose the sport, they choose the athletes, they choose the duration, they choose the format, whether they want horizontal, vertical, and they are generating more than 10,000 highlights every day. And without AI you simply could not do that.
You mentioned earlier how 52% of the content on Olympics.com is devoted to women’s sports and this is also the first Olympics where there are an equal number of men and women athletes. Last week you discussed gender equality, not only in terms of numbers but also changing things like how women athletes are covered and portrayed. Can you elaborate on that challenge?
It’s a subject that I feel very, very passionately about and I haven’t stopped saying that, unfortunately, our industry, especially the sports media industry, is not in a good place, we’re not a good example, and I think we are behind society when it comes to equality. We have made a great effort with OBS to create a more equitable environment and now we are at 47% women and 53% men whereas when we started it was 80% men. And in a year, we will be at 50/50.
But probably most important is the way we cover sports as I think there are still stereotypes and subconscious stereotypes that you see even in pretty big events. And I don’t mean to say that they are being done with bad intentions, it’s mostly unconscious bias that we tend to frame in a stereotypical way. The women athletes are there because she’s an elite athlete, pretty much as a man is an elite athlete. And many times, the depiction of reverse shots of reactions from spectators, you choose a certain stereotype of woman to react, a certain stereotype of a man to react, a certain stereotype of children to react.
And we also have made a huge effort to get the commentators we have in English to be balanced but we’re not three are yet as there are sports where there simply isn’t a single woman broadcaster. We are training in some sports, primarily ex-athletes, to balance that because it’s important that people listen to a man and a woman commentating on boxing because there is no such thing as man’s sport and a woman’s sport. It’s very important that people have a sense that this is normal and a regular thing.
There is still work to be done and I’m pretty happy with the work that we have done here. But I still see in the industry, and even major events, a way of shooting and approaching sports coverage which is clearly geared towards a male audience. It is true that the audience remains predominantly male, even in very advanced countries, and sports is often presented as if it is about guys having a beer together. But in reality, people go to events or watch with their wives and friends and partners. They do sports together, have a great time together, and we need to find a way to make it as normal in sports production as it is in life.
Can you also tell us a bit about the Athletes Moment, where the athletes can talk to family members and friends via videoconferencing right after their event, and how that has evolved?
It’s an incredible story because we started that on the very day when it was confirmed that there would be no spectators in Tokyo. We were playing with the technology to see how we can have something interactive between athletes at the venue and friends and family who were remote because I started thinking that a major sport event without spectators is a killer for broadcasters. We fast tracked the technology and delivered it in two months, and it was a huge success in Tokyo and Beijing because it delivered for the athletes, a lot of emotions, but also delivered emotional moments for the broadcasters. Some of the nicest and most unscripted moments in the Tokyo games came from these interactions.
And then when we started to think about Paris, where we would have full venues and families of athletes would come, we asked does it make sense? And then we started realizing that the athletes loved it so much and the broadcasters liked it so much and everybody was saying, of course you’re going to continue this.
So, we have put it across more sports and it’s even more popular now that people know it better than what it was in the two previous games. Some athletes do have the friends and families here. However, in less advantage parts of the world, of course they cannot travel. And we have opened up a little bit so it’s not just friends and families. In some cases, it is the whole village back home watching or it’s the club where they started being athletes. It delivers big time to the extent that three days ago you had to the mixed badminton team of China and the man proposed to his friend in front of the Athletes Moment, so they had their families back in China able to watch. We had the live connection with China, and they were interacting with their families because they just won the gold medal. And then he turned to her and proposed to her and the families were watching a natural moment. You can’t write that kind of moment.
Last question. The Olympics end next Sunday but, of course, there are then the Paralympics. Can you discuss what that event means to OBS and the Olympic movement?
We’re doing the widest coverage ever of the Paralympics with close to 1,300 hours which makes it one of the biggest sporting events that exists. And here in Paris the opening ceremony will be in the heart of the city at Place de la Concorde, not in the stadium.
The Paralympics have a steady, steady growth from games to games and I’m sure here they will have even more audience than in the previous ones. The Paralympics do benefit some with some of the innovation that we do for the Olympics, especially on the digital front and producing more content for social media, for digital platforms. And of course, most of the operations of the games work because the Olympics provides some good testing.
I personally enjoy the Paralympics very much because what happens in the host country is that people have had such a huge, great vibe and joy from the Olympics that they simply don’t want this to go away. And we have seen that in many countries that they go to the massively go to the Paralympics to relieve this overall Olympic experience. It happened in every country and in France it will happen for sure. We’ll have the Paralympics, I believe, with very full venues with the same type of atmosphere. It’ll be fantastic.
