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> Globo.com only had rights for streaming the content to Brazil... with peak of 433K simultaneous users This is a neat writeup but the bigger point here is hig

> Globo.com only had rights for streaming the content to Brazil... with peak of 433K simultaneous users This is a neat writeup but the bigger point here is highlighted by the opening statements. While i get the massive revenue channel the olympics provides, i can't help but feel that the media stranglehold over the events has gone too far. The olympics represent one of the only instances of global unity through competition left in the world. Much the same way the world cup brings small and proud nations into the global stage, the olympics has the same power. Unfortunately, it is easier for me to find 20 year old simpsons clips on youtube than it is for me to find a video of Bolt's 100m heat from last week. Who benefits from this apart from NBC? I can list approx. 7.4B people who don't. As a lover of capitalism this all leaves me conflicted. But i would point to the olympic coverage as the instance of corporations going too far with their constricting of media sharing.

johansch 10y ago
I feel the same. I've been travelling during the past month. Accessing video content from the Olympics has been extremely hard. I think the IOC might be shooting themselves in both of their feet here. If they don't open open up, they'll some day find that they're suddenly irrelevant. By the way, during the 2012 London Olympics the IOC and Google struck a deal to stream the like 20+ HD channels live to 64 territories: "The live-streaming on the IOC’s YouTube channel will provide exclusive digital access to the London 2012 Olympic Games in territories where digital broadcast rights have not already been acquired by the IOC’s broadcast partners" https://www.olympic.org/news/ioc-to-live-stream-london-2012-in-64-territories-on-its-youtube-channel https://www.olympic.org/news/ioc-to-live-stream-london-2012-... https://youtube.googleblog.com/2012/06/ioc-to-show-live-coverage-of-london.html https://youtube.googleblog.com/2012/06/ioc-to-show-live-cove... I was in one of those regions at the time. It was awesome.
- rhizome 10y ago
  I think the IOC might be shooting themselves in both of their feet here They might get a piece of the vig kicked back to them, but by the time the games started the IOC already had their payday.
bdhess 10y ago
I dunno, I found video of Usain Bolt's 2016 100m in less than a minute of looking around on nbcolympics.com. Though I'd have to imagine that that content is geofiltered, since AFAIK NBC only has streaming rights within the US. NBC paid the IOC something absurd like $12B for exclusive US media rights for the games through 2032. Territorial broadcast rights agreements are a huge source of funding for the IOC. It's hard to imagine how they'd maintain these revenue streams if they abandoned the exclusivity aspect of their media agreements, which likely implies that the games would suffer in some way.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 10y ago
  If NBC were hosting a fireworks show they'd make the people that didn't pay stay indoors. Edit: Perhaps the strategy isn't effective, that's all.
- Retric 10y ago
  I completely skipped watching the Olympics in large part because of NBC which is terrible. So, I have some doubt that 12B is optimal for the IOC and it clearly sucks for the rest of US.
  - xur17 10y ago
    I did the same. I tried to find a live stream online, and failed. Everything I tried wanted me to login with cable credentials. Ended up watching it on my broadcast TV for about 10 minutes before giving up, and didn't watch anymore.
    - js2 10y ago
      Too late now, but you could have purchased a Playstation Vue subscription for one month ($30, one week free trial) which would have given you full access to the NBC Sports app and nbcolympics.com. You can sign up on the web and don't need a Playstation. That's what I did since I don't have a TV subscription and it worked well. The NBC iOS and tvOS app was pretty awful in forcing ads, but the Roku app let you skip mostly skip through them, which is how I did most of my watching.
wnevets 10y ago
>Unfortunately, it is easier for me to find 20 year old simpsons clips on youtube than it is for me to find a video of Bolt's 100m heat from last week. So glad I wasn't the only one. For whatever reason the nbc link to the video was never on the front of google.
- cylinder 10y ago
  This was maddening as well. I had to go through nbcsports app and dig deep to find "Michael Phelps wins gold after thrilling final!" Instead of "200m X stroke final"
  - tmptmp 10y ago
    Such apps are menace. It seems that these apps cannot even do anything better than simple string search. They should learn a thing: Let Google do the search for them not their app. A joke for the people who know little bit of programming: Hope they are not using strcmp to find the video file with title "Michael Phelps wins gold after thrilling final!" :( edit: a typo
    - seanp2k2 10y ago
      Probably untuned MySQL full text search, possibly Solr with all the default settings looking only at titles.
- LanceH 10y ago
  The ads streamed just fine. None of the actual events streamed after the ads finished.
  - nsxwolf 10y ago
    Perverse that ads always work. I feel like I'm owed some kind of monetary compensation every time I watch an ad and then don't get to see the video I wanted to watch.
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
I cannot stand NBC and their selfish Olympic coverage.
edpichler 10y ago
Meanwhile, CBC of Canada broadcasted all olympic games for free. They had peak of 27 simultaneous channels transmitting competitions with excellent quality. Anyone with a Canadian IP could watch, I personally used a VPN because I don't have TV cable here in Brazil.
- mrb 10y ago
  So did the BBC. They broadcasted for free multiple channels of Olympic events to any and all British IP addresses. I also used a VPN because I don't have cable TV. I have no idea why Olympics events are not freely broadcasted in the US.
  - caidh 10y ago
    Because the US does not have well funded public television as the UK (the BBC) or Canada (the CBC) do. In the US, sadly, it is to the highest bidder that the broadcast & streaming rights go to. NBC paid $1.23 Billion for rights to the 2016 Summer Olympics, an astronomical amount. They only provided streaming to those with cable packages above what is considered 'basic'.
    - grokavi 10y ago
      hotstar.com broadcasted Olympics free of cost in India. They aren't public funded.
      - Fuzzwah 10y ago
        Channel 7 here in Australia broadcast on 3 channels for free (with ads). They also offered free streaming on mobile devices for a range of sports and had a $20 deal for complete access to all content. That said, they really annoyed me with the way they handled the time difference. They would open their prime time coverage with spoilers of all the previous day's events and then tell you which replays you could watch on the other channels later....
        10y ago
_rpd 10y ago
On the other hand, it did motivate me to find a way to stream NBC Sports. Something I wouldn't have done otherwise.
rakoo 10y ago
> As a lover of capitalism this all leaves me conflicted. I don't want to go on a tangent but this is the exact contrary of Capitalism, it's a monopoly: as a consumer I can't make a choice, there is no market.
- jaredklewis 10y ago
  I feel the word monopoly gets way overused. "There is only one company with a train from Town A to Town B! It's a monopoly!" Probably not, as if there are other viable ways to travel (car, bus, plane, boat), then there are substitutes. The olympics are no different. As a form of entertainment, there are countless substitutes. If the Olympics are boring, people won't watch. Even as a form of international cooperation, there are many substitutes that compete with the Olympics for the time, money, and attention of nations. There is a market.
  - ppereira 10y ago
    Just like public utilities don't have a monopoly on the provision of power, because, hey, every home-owner can buy a diesel generator. With the level of substitution you are describing, you've made the word monopoly meaningless. The regional broadcasters for the Olympics have a monopoly because of their economic power in setting the price for their good. Other than circumventing copyright or using a VPN, there is no competitor that will provide you with the Olympics for less money. Random youtube videos are not a substitute for watching an Olympics broadcast live.
    - jamra 10y ago
      Public utilities are regulated, which require them to make their case in front of a judge for price changes.
    - rahimnathwani 10y ago
      For many routes, planes/trains/coaches are substitutes, so it's meaningful to say that trains are not monopolies. How do we know? Because when train tickets go up in price, there's a measurable effect on the number of coach tickets bought. Your example (household electricity vs. diesel generators) doesn't work in the same way. If domestic electricity prices in London were to go up by 25℅, the number of diesel generators and amount of diesel fuel sold would not budge. Because diesel isn't a reasonable substitute. If anyone wants to know more, search the internet for 'cross elasticity of demand' and 'definition of substitute'.
robbiep 10y ago
>'The olympics represent one of the only instances of global unity through competition left in the world.' What were the other ones that have presumably ceased to exist?
- mattkrause 10y ago
  The World Cup is also probably pretty close too. Maybe Eurovision also (for Europeans under about 35, perhaps).
X86BSD 10y ago
And for the Olympics, the ancient games meant to bring people together, I for one couldn't watch 5 minutes of any of it as I am a chord cutter and couldn't stream jack, legally that is. No one should have a monopoly on the Olympics. I find that rather sad and telling.
akerro 10y ago
London 2012: He said: "You probably wouldn't be walking in with a Pepsi T-shirt because Coca Cola are our sponsors." Interviewer Evan Davis asked Lord Coe if he would be able to enter the Olympic Park wearing Nike trainers, to which Lord Coe replied: "Let's put some reality in this. You probably would be able to walk through with Nike trainers." Lord Coe defended the ban on 'objects or clothing bearing political statements or overt commercial identification' outlined in official guidelines for spectators. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/news/9414178/London-2012-Olympics-You-can-wear-Nike-trainers-but-leave-the-Pepsi-T-shirt-at-home-says-Lord-Coe.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/news/9414178/Londo...

johansch 10y ago

I feel the same. I've been travelling during the past month. Accessing video content from the Olympics has been extremely hard. I think the IOC might be shooting themselves in both of their feet here. If they don't open open up, they'll some day find that they're suddenly irrelevant. By the way, during the 2012 London Olympics the IOC and Google struck a deal to stream the like 20+ HD channels live to 64 territories: "The live-streaming on the IOC’s YouTube channel will provide exclusive digital access to the London 2012 Olympic Games in territories where digital broadcast rights have not already been acquired by the IOC’s broadcast partners" https://www.olympic.org/news/ioc-to-live-stream-london-2012-in-64-territories-on-its-youtube-channel https://www.olympic.org/news/ioc-to-live-stream-london-2012-... https://youtube.googleblog.com/2012/06/ioc-to-show-live-coverage-of-london.html https://youtube.googleblog.com/2012/06/ioc-to-show-live-cove... I was in one of those regions at the time. It was awesome.

rhizome 10y ago
I think the IOC might be shooting themselves in both of their feet here They might get a piece of the vig kicked back to them, but by the time the games started the IOC already had their payday.

bdhess 10y ago

I dunno, I found video of Usain Bolt's 2016 100m in less than a minute of looking around on nbcolympics.com. Though I'd have to imagine that that content is geofiltered, since AFAIK NBC only has streaming rights within the US. NBC paid the IOC something absurd like $12B for exclusive US media rights for the games through 2032. Territorial broadcast rights agreements are a huge source of funding for the IOC. It's hard to imagine how they'd maintain these revenue streams if they abandoned the exclusivity aspect of their media agreements, which likely implies that the games would suffer in some way.

0xdeadbeefbabe 10y ago
If NBC were hosting a fireworks show they'd make the people that didn't pay stay indoors. Edit: Perhaps the strategy isn't effective, that's all.
Retric 10y ago
I completely skipped watching the Olympics in large part because of NBC which is terrible. So, I have some doubt that 12B is optimal for the IOC and it clearly sucks for the rest of US.
- xur17 10y ago
  I did the same. I tried to find a live stream online, and failed. Everything I tried wanted me to login with cable credentials. Ended up watching it on my broadcast TV for about 10 minutes before giving up, and didn't watch anymore.
  - js2 10y ago
    Too late now, but you could have purchased a Playstation Vue subscription for one month ($30, one week free trial) which would have given you full access to the NBC Sports app and nbcolympics.com. You can sign up on the web and don't need a Playstation. That's what I did since I don't have a TV subscription and it worked well. The NBC iOS and tvOS app was pretty awful in forcing ads, but the Roku app let you skip mostly skip through them, which is how I did most of my watching.

wnevets 10y ago

>Unfortunately, it is easier for me to find 20 year old simpsons clips on youtube than it is for me to find a video of Bolt's 100m heat from last week. So glad I wasn't the only one. For whatever reason the nbc link to the video was never on the front of google.

cylinder 10y ago
This was maddening as well. I had to go through nbcsports app and dig deep to find "Michael Phelps wins gold after thrilling final!" Instead of "200m X stroke final"
- tmptmp 10y ago
  Such apps are menace. It seems that these apps cannot even do anything better than simple string search. They should learn a thing: Let Google do the search for them not their app. A joke for the people who know little bit of programming: Hope they are not using strcmp to find the video file with title "Michael Phelps wins gold after thrilling final!" :( edit: a typo
  - seanp2k2 10y ago
    Probably untuned MySQL full text search, possibly Solr with all the default settings looking only at titles.
LanceH 10y ago
The ads streamed just fine. None of the actual events streamed after the ads finished.
- nsxwolf 10y ago
  Perverse that ads always work. I feel like I'm owed some kind of monetary compensation every time I watch an ad and then don't get to see the video I wanted to watch.

JustSomeNobody 10y ago

I cannot stand NBC and their selfish Olympic coverage.

edpichler 10y ago

Meanwhile, CBC of Canada broadcasted all olympic games for free. They had peak of 27 simultaneous channels transmitting competitions with excellent quality. Anyone with a Canadian IP could watch, I personally used a VPN because I don't have TV cable here in Brazil.

mrb 10y ago
So did the BBC. They broadcasted for free multiple channels of Olympic events to any and all British IP addresses. I also used a VPN because I don't have cable TV. I have no idea why Olympics events are not freely broadcasted in the US.
- caidh 10y ago
  Because the US does not have well funded public television as the UK (the BBC) or Canada (the CBC) do. In the US, sadly, it is to the highest bidder that the broadcast & streaming rights go to. NBC paid $1.23 Billion for rights to the 2016 Summer Olympics, an astronomical amount. They only provided streaming to those with cable packages above what is considered 'basic'.
  - grokavi 10y ago
    hotstar.com broadcasted Olympics free of cost in India. They aren't public funded.
    - Fuzzwah 10y ago
      Channel 7 here in Australia broadcast on 3 channels for free (with ads). They also offered free streaming on mobile devices for a range of sports and had a $20 deal for complete access to all content. That said, they really annoyed me with the way they handled the time difference. They would open their prime time coverage with spoilers of all the previous day's events and then tell you which replays you could watch on the other channels later....
      - 10y ago

_rpd 10y ago

On the other hand, it did motivate me to find a way to stream NBC Sports. Something I wouldn't have done otherwise.

rakoo 10y ago

> As a lover of capitalism this all leaves me conflicted. I don't want to go on a tangent but this is the exact contrary of Capitalism, it's a monopoly: as a consumer I can't make a choice, there is no market.

jaredklewis 10y ago
I feel the word monopoly gets way overused. "There is only one company with a train from Town A to Town B! It's a monopoly!" Probably not, as if there are other viable ways to travel (car, bus, plane, boat), then there are substitutes. The olympics are no different. As a form of entertainment, there are countless substitutes. If the Olympics are boring, people won't watch. Even as a form of international cooperation, there are many substitutes that compete with the Olympics for the time, money, and attention of nations. There is a market.
- ppereira 10y ago
  Just like public utilities don't have a monopoly on the provision of power, because, hey, every home-owner can buy a diesel generator. With the level of substitution you are describing, you've made the word monopoly meaningless. The regional broadcasters for the Olympics have a monopoly because of their economic power in setting the price for their good. Other than circumventing copyright or using a VPN, there is no competitor that will provide you with the Olympics for less money. Random youtube videos are not a substitute for watching an Olympics broadcast live.
  - jamra 10y ago
    Public utilities are regulated, which require them to make their case in front of a judge for price changes.
  - rahimnathwani 10y ago
    For many routes, planes/trains/coaches are substitutes, so it's meaningful to say that trains are not monopolies. How do we know? Because when train tickets go up in price, there's a measurable effect on the number of coach tickets bought. Your example (household electricity vs. diesel generators) doesn't work in the same way. If domestic electricity prices in London were to go up by 25℅, the number of diesel generators and amount of diesel fuel sold would not budge. Because diesel isn't a reasonable substitute. If anyone wants to know more, search the internet for 'cross elasticity of demand' and 'definition of substitute'.

robbiep 10y ago

>'The olympics represent one of the only instances of global unity through competition left in the world.' What were the other ones that have presumably ceased to exist?

mattkrause 10y ago
The World Cup is also probably pretty close too. Maybe Eurovision also (for Europeans under about 35, perhaps).

X86BSD 10y ago

And for the Olympics, the ancient games meant to bring people together, I for one couldn't watch 5 minutes of any of it as I am a chord cutter and couldn't stream jack, legally that is. No one should have a monopoly on the Olympics. I find that rather sad and telling.

akerro 10y ago

London 2012: He said: "You probably wouldn't be walking in with a Pepsi T-shirt because Coca Cola are our sponsors." Interviewer Evan Davis asked Lord Coe if he would be able to enter the Olympic Park wearing Nike trainers, to which Lord Coe replied: "Let's put some reality in this. You probably would be able to walk through with Nike trainers." Lord Coe defended the ban on 'objects or clothing bearing political statements or overt commercial identification' outlined in official guidelines for spectators. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/news/9414178/London-2012-Olympics-You-can-wear-Nike-trainers-but-leave-the-Pepsi-T-shirt-at-home-says-Lord-Coe.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/news/9414178/Londo...