PARIS — Two weeks ago, the rooftop of the Hotel Raphael was just that: an exclusive hotel rooftop with tables for dinner, wine and picture-book views of the Arc de Triomphe.
Now on the eve of the Olympic Games, it is a state-of-the-art set of TV studios that will bring the Olympic Games to life for hundreds of millions of people across Europe.
The 360-degree views are worth every penny of the millions spent by Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) – on top of the £1bn they have already spent on the Olympics TV rights package – to give viewers a five-star streaming experience for £3.99 a month, a reduction for the Games from the usual price of £6.99.
This is the first summer Olympics in an accessible time zone where UK viewers will find their access to live action via the BBC limited to two live streams, the main coverage and alternative “red button” with no option to choose the sport they watch, after the national broadcaster lost the comprehensive rights to WBD in the wake of Rio 2016.
The Olympics is a Category A designated event by UK law, meaning there must be some live coverage available on free-to-air channels, so even though WBD won the bid for the rights, they had to agree a sub-licence deal.
But the BBC still received hundreds of complaints about the lack of coverage when the Games were held in Tokyo, although the overnight nature of many events meant the majority viewers were unaware of the limitations.
This time around though, with Paris only an hour ahead of the UK, fans are far more likely to find themselves frustrated at being unable to watch their favourite sport – and will discover that they have to add Eurosport to their TV package or subscribe to Discovery+ online if they want the same level of coverage enjoyed at London 2012 or Rio 2016.
“I think the days of experiencing Olympic Games on a linear channel where you sat back and waited for a producer to tell you what was happening [are gone],” Scott Young, the content and production guru at Discovery, says.
“You can curate that to your own experience. And if you want to move away from what you’re seeing, you can pick up any particular device or even use your main TV, go on to Discovery+ and start to navigate your own experience.”
Young was previously head of F1 at Sky Sports, part of a programme that helped revolutionise the viewing habits of motorsport fans in the UK, and the WBD network of studios was his brainchild – drawn up on a piece of paper after dinner and a glass of wine at the Hotel Raphael.
Building it was no mean feat though. Seventy-eight tonnes had to be lifted off the roof to make room for the four studios and three “stand-up” positions for solo pieces to camera.
Once the site was clear, there were 24 trucks worth of equipment include one high-tech camera rig that was shipped from Atlanta, which then required 340 crane lifts to get them on site.
There are more than 15 miles of cabling to power the studios and then transmit the footage, in the case of the UK studio, back to producers in Chiswick, who will then edit and beam the broadcast around the country.
It is a mammoth operation – the audience reach of that one rooftop is over 300 million people – but it is one that WBD bosses hope will set them apart, in the UK at least, from the BBC coverage, along with the more comprehensive and “immersive” offering.
“The Olympics is on BBC, and it still is, and it’s on our platform as well,” Young adds.
“The immersive nature of what we offer is you can watch every moment of the Olympic Games on our streaming product, discovery+.
“So you can choose how you want to experience the Games. We are expert storytellers in all forms of sport and very much Olympic Games.
“We have 98 Olympic athletes as part of our team representing 132 medals, so we know how to bring the story of the games to life. We believe that viewers will choose where they want to go and watch that story.
“If you’re an equestrian fan, if you’re a diving fan, if you’re an athletics fan, you can watch that all day long with commentary, with the right background, with the right people that can help tell you the story.”
The BBC’s reduction in rights – and inevitable drop in viewing figures as a result of most live coverage going behind a paywall – could be a death knell to some athletes’ hopes of mass exposure though.
For the majority of Team GB, the Olympics is a career pinnacle and an opportunity to reach millions of people who might otherwise never have heard of them.
Sports like hockey, which helped launch the careers of Sam Quek, are likely to suffer because they will require the BBC to dedicate hours of airtime, rather than being able to jump in for the medal moment.
However, athletes’ ability to self-promote, through their own channels or through the platform offered by their sponsors, has never been greater.
“A good sponsor will help the athletes to be noticed more than the others,” explains Ricardo Fort, the former head of global sponsorships at Visa and the Coca-Cola Company, both major sponsors of the Olympic Games.
“Because of social media, [athletes] have their own platforms to talk about what they are doing. There are of course restrictions during the Olympic time but it’s not like in the past that they rely exclusively on what broadcasters choose to just show.
“I’ve worked with hundreds of Olympic athletes in my career and we always encouraged them to do more. When you look at what the brands are doing, every Olympic sponsor had a “Team Visa” or “Team Toyota” or “Coca Cola team”.
“So what they do is they work with the athletes to promote their content and to help them be more visible.”