Live From Paris 2024: Impressions of Week One and a New Era in Olympic Production
Perhaps the most notable change is increased reliance on at-home operations
Attending and working at an Olympics Games is a privilege for anyone, and, with the exception of the Beijing Games in 2022, I have been blessed to go behind the scenes of nine of the last 10 Games and 10 overall (going back to the Salt Lake City 2002 Winter Games). Over the years, I’ve been able to spend time with hundreds of executives, discussing the Olympics and the role they have played in technology advances: the move to HD, UHD, HDR, IP, the Cloud, 8K, SurroundSSound (and beyond), social media, OTT and digital services, internet-based transmission, fiber-based transmission, bonded cellular, and, yes, even 3D and virtual reality. If I really want to push it, my reporting days go back to 1992 and the early days of nonlinear editing, digital-video formats, and HD at the Olympics.
Wandering the halls of an IBC and discussing the evolution of production tools, the challenges of logistics in a new city, and how to make the most of the tons of content being created has been a constant learning experience. The halls of an IBC are literally a United Nations of the greatest talent in sports production. And all of that talent — both the veterans who laid the foundation of innovation and the young up-and-comers who will blaze new trails for decades to come — have one focus: to create the best viewing experience for sports fans around the globe, each of whom want to see their home-country athletes do well and also be covered equally to those from the largest nations.
Each Olympics is different, reflecting not only new technologies but also the culture of the host city and nation. Each Games is also a step forward in terms of sustainability, venue design, and logistics. For example, this year, the temporary venues created are just as dynamic as the venues that often have be built for an Olympics and then became wastelands. No wastelands will come out of Paris 2024: those venues will be taken down and leave nothing behind but memories.
As the final week of Paris 2024 begins, the energy and enthusiasm around the content-creation efforts remain across the halls of the IBC and across the city (and yes, even beyond Paris to places like Tahiti where, according to Facebook posts from a friend working on the event, things are, to quote Larry David, pretty, pretty good).
Life and Work at the IBC
The International Broadcast Center (IBC) at Le Parc des Expositions in Bourget (about a 15-minute drive from Stade de France and Charles de Gaulle Airport) is the center point of the technical infrastructure driving the Games. It is where Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) has its main transmission, signal management, distribution, archive operations, audio and commentary monitoring and signal management, logistics, and more. It is also where many rightsholders have their technical operations.
The IBC has changed greatly since Tokyo 2020. Notably, the International Broadcast Center (IBC) and the Main Press Center (MPC) are in different locations (the MPC is about 20 minutes away at Palais des Congrès de Paris at Porte Maillot). The move makes sense, putting the relevant professionals much closer to the event locations where they spend most of their time, saving time but also allowing them to rely on public transport rather than a dedicated transport system, which requires more buses and emits more carbon.
But the absence of an MPC definitely lends a different feel to the IBC, absent the hundreds of still photographers, reporters, and other media professionals who typically be swarming the facility. As a result, the IBC is quieter and calmer and is more focused on the TV professionals who help shape the story of Paris 2024, which is being played out on TV sets and digital devices all around the world.
The map for one of the IBC halls shows broadcasters’ locations. Areas marked CTA house the equipment racks, allowing air-conditioning to be concentrated in rooms filled with heat-generating gear.
Historically, IBC operations have been a mix of studio operations, production-control rooms, audio-mixing areas, graphics areas, voiceover booths, and much more. As SVG reported in 2021 and 2022, workflows born out of the pandemic opened a new era of remote operations, with rightsholders (and their key technology and services partners) innovating out of necessity. At Paris 2024, such workflows have taken hold at a scale unimaginable only six years ago: many of those production capabilities are not at the IBC.
The CBC, for example, has moved them to Canada House. Australia’s Channel Nine has shifted them to the broadcast tower at the Trocadéro (and also back home). France Televisions have located many of them, logically, at its headquarters here in Paris. For WBD and Eurosport, “WBD House” near the Arc de Triomphe is shared by multiple Eurosport-market production teams. And, of course, NBC Olympics and Telemundo are relying on facilities in Stamford, CT, and Miami, respectively.
A core technical component remains at the IBC, helping ensure that OBS-provided content is sent to home-country production hubs properly, for all the broadcasters that have operations in Paris. South Korea’s KBS, however, is actually producing two channels from the IBC — one of the few broadcasters, if not the only one, doing so.
This is a win-win for all involved from both a cost and storytelling standpoint. More people back home can finalize the program, but the studio locations, freed of having to be in the IBC and near a technical backbone, can be in more interesting locations. They don’t require thousands of square feet of operating space to support both the studio needs and the technical infrastructure.
The view from the multi-story studio facility that OBS built near the Trocadéro affords broadcasters a spectacular backdrop for reports from Paris.
These leaps in productivity, sustainability, and efficiency are a result not only of the move to SMPTE ST 2110 but also of the wide availability of fiber transport, which can handle the vast number of signals moving across the globe. By the way, there is still plenty of SDI and baseband signal transport, often between OBS and rightsholders. Those rightsholders send the signals home, often to a plant that has ST 2110. (Shameless plug: if you want to learn more about these workflows, check out the SVG Paris Olympics Blog, which offers live written reports, video interviews, photo galleries from events, and much more.)
Venue operations have taken great strides this week. The use of shallow–depth-of-field cameras has become a big part of every event coverage, and the use of bonded-cellular transmission gives ENG crews tremendous flexibility in sending reports from almost anywhere and has become ubiquitous among the rightsholders (in the mixed-zone areas, however, rightsholders still prefer to rely on OBS internet circuits for guaranteed bandwidth in venues where they otherwise might battle tens of thousands of cellphone users for bandwidth). Clearly, the use of POV cameras, robotics, and aerial cabled cameras are part of just about every OBS production effort, ensuring that the production teams have all the right angles and then some.
Paris Lives Up to Its Billing
When it was announced that the 2024 Olympics would be held in Paris, there was plenty of private concern about what it would be like. Would the city be a ghost town and the venues empty because the residents fled to the south of France? And, in a city where workers seem to love going on strike, would an unexpected walkout lead to chaos?
Thankfully, Paris has delivered. First and foremost, all the venues are jam-packed. The past five Olympic Games have been challenging for fans around the world to attend — not only because of the pandemic but also because of the vast distances and costs associated with travel.
But these Games feel vastly different from previous versions. The stands are filled for event after event, French fans spontaneously break into singing the French national anthem, and there is a palpable joy everywhere. Spend a few hours wandering around the Place de la Concorde, where three venues are located, and, thus, in the center of Paris, and you will see busy streets, happy fans, and, of course, Parisians and visitors from around the world just checking out the scene.
No moment brought that home to me like a late-evening visit to see the Olympic flame. On Friday night, the area around the Louvre and the Tuileries Garden teemed with tens of thousands of people waiting for the flame to rise. The Olympic flame always draws a crowd to see it and take a picture (the exception being London 2012, when it was in the Olympic Stadium), but the crowds on Friday night were the largest I have ever seen, and, apparently, I am not alone in that opinion.
More Stories To Tell
In the coming days, SVG and SVG Europe will dive deeper and get more impressions from not only rightsholders in the IBC but also key OBS executives (for a look at some of the key innovations, watch this video). We and, in turn, you will have a chance to learn about efforts from the use of AI in creating highlights, to how successful the OBS deployment of a “virtual OB van” was and what that means for the future, to the use of cloud, ST 2110, the future of immersive audio, the increasing reliance on AR and XR for studio operations, and much, much more.
At Paris 2024, the Olympics have entered a new era in production and operations. And there’s a new era in delivery both in the U.S. and in Europe. In Europe in recent years, I was unable to watch the Max app, but the app was launched in Europe ahead of Paris 2024, and now I have been able to watch all the Eurosport live feeds and replays. Ironically, if there is one thing that is hard to do when you are at an Olympics, it’s keeping on top of all the amazing action taking place day after day and night after night.