Cloud technology brings Tokyo 2020 to billions of viewers worldwide, and launches the Olympics into a new digital era
- Half a century after the first Games in Tokyo pioneered satellite broadcasting, the OBS Cloud platform is innovating TV and online coverage
- The collaboration between Olympic Broadcasting Services and Alibaba Cloud was accelerated to meet the needs arising from the Covid-19 pandemic
The journey to Olympic gold has never been so fraught. The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic not only caused a one-year delay of Tokyo 2020, but it also made the adoption of new technology an imperative – meaning this year’s Games are unprecedented in almost every way.
Cloud services and other tech companies have teamed up with broadcasters to trial technologies that are springboarding the Olympics into a new digital age, and changing the way the event’s exciting moments of athleticism and sportsmanship reach its global audience.
Broadcasters are being supported by OBS Cloud, a collaboration between Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) and Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, which also owns the South China Morning Post.
OBS Cloud is pioneering the remote distribution of content to broadcasters in a variety of formats to meet the different needs of media platforms used around the world. Innovative front- and back-end solutions mean media outlets need less hardware and fewer people on the ground, as real-time feeds of the Games can be delivered through the cloud anytime and anywhere.
Social media, digital and mobile content are the key focus of these new cloud-based solutions in anticipation of the broadcasting industry’s full migration to digital operations. A prime example is Content+, which is producing thousands of hours of Tokyo 2020 footage for various digital platforms, such as short-form content clips suited for social media posts. There are 17 rights-holding broadcasters (RHBs) and four news agencies subscribing to the service for the Games.
In addition, a full suite of footage for linear television and digital media is accessible to the 31 RHBs that have signed up for the OBS content asset management subscription. Broadcasters are able to set up content creation systems, and access live feeds as well as files of near-real-time event coverage to produce and edit material targeted to their own demographics.
