Day 11: Eurosport; 6-9-22

 This place has everything; Eurosport’s operation is insane.  They can broadcast in 20 different languages across the world. That is a challenge because, for one event, Eurosport could have 50 different commentators simultaneously to suit all their other clients.  Think about it this way. If you look at ESPN’s operations, they don’t even match up. ESPN for a game might have their 1 announcing team calling the game.  Eurosport has enough crew on game coverage that they would need to rent out an entire part of the stadium if everyone was on site. S0, Eurosport has a bunch of different announcing booths in their offices, or a bunch of people even working from home.   Eurosport does this because they have over 52 other markets and 75 European countries to produce content for. 

 

Now, on to the operations part of this whole deal. These 52 different markets that Eurosport has show other things about what the market might be interested in. They have 2 television channels, Eurosport 1 International and Eurosport 2, in all their needs. Also, they can have 110 streams available at once on the digital front.  For example, during Roland- Garros' first week, there were 17 matches simultaneously. Eurosport has the opportunity with its platform to show the game that is important to its selective audiences. 

 

What Eurosport shows also depends on what they have the right to deliver in certain areas. Rights are not cheap either. For example, those rights cost 2 billion dollars for the Olympic games.  The Olympics is vast for Eurosport.  They broadcasted the Olympics for the first time in 2018. The nice thing they have to their advantage is that with all these different markets, they can have a separate Olympic competition in each consumer location.   The company is debating whether it’s worth it to continue buying rights to the Olympics because the costs outweigh the returns. 

 

Now, let’s move on to the decision-making piece of the equation. We, as viewers, often whine about why a particular game is at a specific time of day. Today, I learned why this is the case, and I will do my best to explain to you, the reader, in a way that makes sense.   For example, let’s go back to the Olympics for a second here. A big star is swimming, or it’s the finals. Networks get to talk with the organization in charge to decide when it might be best to have this race to help match the time their audience might be awake. So, it’s not just a random time that networks like Eurosport or NBC choose to put a game on. It's all the best time they see fit for a given match. 

 

 

Eurosport has rights to many things; some are exclusive to specific locations, others are abroad. Some sports they have are the premier league, cycling, tennis, golf, darts, soccer, Euro league and so much more. It’s a lot to manage, but to be competitive, that’s what you have to do. The way Eurosport makes money is through commercials and their consumer subscription plans. On a subscription, you can buy a specific tournament, have a month's access, or have a year's access. It all depends on what the consumer wants to do. 

 

 

I have a couple of final points I want to touch on in today’s blog, the first being the re-airing of live sports.  This is a tricky process. For example, let’s say there was a game that was 4 hours long. The replay is going to only be an hour or 2 hours. Replays show the essential parts, but I mentioned that every broadcast has several different languages, making it impossible for every broadcast audio to be done simultaneously. Hence, the trick Eurosport uses is Cue points. This means there will be a countdown from 5 to 1 at specific broadcast points in the b, telling the announcers to stop talking.  This process makes it easy for you to jump into what might be next. 

 

 

 

The next thing that surprised me was what was said about live broadcasting. Things happen sometimes, however. It is protesters, or someone gets hurt. It’s all live. Eurosport’s approach is to not back away from a scene like American channels might do. Years later, Americans are still mad about the Janet Jackson situation in the Super Bowl. They want to give context to what’s happening without leaving their consumers suspenseful. That is the opposite of what happens in America. 

 

 

This approach to covering many things and doing everything live is insane. It’s a lot of work, but that’s what the company’s job is; nobody wants to watch an important game three days later because the network chose to delay broadcasting the event.  One broadcaster group can’t do everything well, but they can try their best to work as a huge team to make the magic we see on television work. Till next time, bonne journée to you.