The 2010 Winter Games is bringing us lots of Olympic firsts from a technology and media perspective. For the first time in Olympic history, the Games will be broadcast live in HD in movie theatres throughout Canada. As is the case of most sporting events, watching competitions with a roomful of fellow fans definitely adds to the excitement and energy of the event and I think this is a great way to get more people involved in the Olympics and winter sports in general. Until they bring that to the States (or unless someone reading this blog wants to send me to Vancouver), a living room full of semi-fans (aka my friends who can't come up with better plans that day) in my apartment will have to do.
The next Olympic first: The Vancouver Olympic Committee has announced that they will be providing audience members of figure skating, curling and hockey games with in-venue headsets to hear live commentary throughout the events. There will also be some sort of texting mechanism for the audience to interact with the commentators. Similar headsets have been used before, like at the U.S Open and I am super excited about this. I really hope this carries over to future sporting events, particularly in skating. With the new judging system, it can sometimes be very hard to understand why skaters receive the scores they do and having the commentators' opinions (who have access to the judges' scores) would be incredibly helpful. The commentary will be provided in English and French. No word yet on how much these headsets will cost.
There will be 64 events at the 2010 Paralympic games and 64 gold medals will be awarded.
The upcoming Summer Olympics in 2012 in London will mark the first time in 64 years that the Olympics has returned to the U.K. The previous time was in London in 1948. London also hosted the 1908 Olympics and they were supposed to host the 1944 Summer Olympics, but that was canceled due to World War II.
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Less than 4 minutes today! Victory!
ReplyDeleteSounds interesting but I'm confused on how that will quite work out. Headsets for every single person in the crowd? Seems like it would be more of a distraction than anything.
ReplyDeleteI'm all for creating an atmosphere of community and connecting thoughts and recieving feedback, but I also feel it needs to be in an appropriate form. It's a new idea though so I'm not apposed to giving it a shot at least to see what happens.
Fascinating I really Wonder what announcing crew they will get over headsets.
ReplyDeleteIt's actually not a totally new concept. A large percentage of LA Dodger fans have been bringing portable radios to Dodger games for the last 50 years. People in the stands--even those w/o radios--can hear Vin Scully doing play-by-play as the game goes on, and it doesn't seem to distract anyone.
ReplyDeleteNice idea--the best of both worlds.
The headsets, called Skatebug was used at Four Continents in Vancouver. We had two channels of commentary to choose from. One had more chatter than the other. It was great, I loved it.
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