Paris 2024: Inside WBD’s Olympics Broadcast Operation
Matt McDonald, group SVP EMEA Broadcast Services for Warner Bros. Discovery, explains how the broadcaster delivered thousands of hours of Paris 2024 content to linear channels and online platforms across Europe. Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) enjoyed a stellar Summer Olympic Games, reporting record viewership and engagement across its many platforms and channels.
Shortly after the closing ceremony on Sunday 11 August, WBD said it had achieved a cumulative reach of more than 215 million in Europe viewing Olympics content on WBD’s platforms (23% more than Tokyo 2020), including Max and discovery+, as well as its Eurosport TV channels and free-to-air networks in Norway (TVNorge), Sweden (Kanal 5) and Finland (Kutonen, TV5).
In total, WBD aired more than 3,800 hours of live content, providing outputs to 47 rights territories, with 59 linear channels – including 46 Eurosport channels across Europe in 19 languages – and a digital offering (Max, HBO Max or discovery+, depending on territory) provided viewers with every moment – peaking at 54 parallel events on the busiest day. Plus, specifically for Paris 2024, seven HD pop-up channels and one UHD pop-up channel made available to 34 affiliates and partners across Europe.
Capturing, managing and delivering all that content was a mammoth task, and leading the department responsible for broadcast operations and technology across Europe was Matt McDonald, group SVP EMEA Broadcast Services for Warner Bros. Discovery (pictured above).
“Our operations teams executed brilliantly to enable our editorial teams to tell the stories of the Games”
Speaking with SVG Europe at the WBD House studio facility at Hotel Raphael during the Games, McDonald says there were two main elements to preparing for Paris 2024: the on-site prep (including the build of WBD House and the other on-site production facilities such as the mixed zones, venues, and the NOC houses), plus the scaling up of WBD’s European sports platform.
He says: “We have an enormous 2110 capability based upon two tech hubs, one in London and another in Hilversum in the Netherlands. They support our two main operational hubs, in London (Chiswick) and Paris (Issy-les-Moulineaux) that provide core capabilities for all EMEA. These hubs also provide studios and galleries, plus we also have 10 other production hubs across Europe (Munich, Milan, Stockholm, Oslo, Lisbon, Madrid, Hilversum, Warsaw, Copenhagen and Stockley Park) and for Paris 2024, we also had engineering support and some post-production out of Atlanta in the US.
“The main thing for us is that the two main operational hubs run everything – bookings, MCR, ingest, media management, playout – so those are the centres of the operation and Paris has made all the difference for us during the Olympics,” he says.
With previous Games taking place in China, Japan, South Korea and Brazil, Paris 2024 was a ‘home fixture’ for WBD, which has its EMEA HQ in Issy-les-Moulineaux, in the south of the city. The fact it was a local Games not only provided a boost to viewing figures thanks to the favourable European time zone, but because WBD already had such an established site and ready-made production facility in Paris it also provided the opportunity to reduce its presence at the International Broadcasting Centre (IBC).
WBD’s base at the IBC on the other side of the city consisted of a “small footprint” manned by 28 staff across two shifts to provide the on-pass of host broadcaster Olympic Broadcasting Services’ (OBS) feeds of the Games.