The BBC signs a deal with Eurosport to show Olympics
In a huge save-of-face for Britain’s favourite free-to-air broadcaster, the BBC has struck a deal with Eurosport to show both the summer and the winter Olympic Games until at least 2024.
The deal comes seven months after Eurosport’s owner, Discovery Communications acquired the hotly contested rights to the Olympic Games, almost ensuring that the BBC would be locked out of showing any Olympic action, a scenario that could have been significantly damaging to the BBC considering their history of showing the event.
However, the powers-that-be at the publicly-funded broadcaster have scrambled to sign a long-term deal with Discover Communications ensuring that BBC will be the “exclusive free-to-air” Olympic Games broadcaster in the UK for the next five games including the winter games in 2018 and 2022.
In addition to the deal, the BBC and Discovery will team up to explore the potential for combining their production operations to provide a better service to their audiences sharing resources and wholly working together.
BBC Sport Director Barbara Slater said that they were delighted to form this “innovative partnership” which would ensure that the BBC remains the home of the greatest sporting event.
“The Olympic Games is one of the nation’s most treasured sporting events”, she said.
“This is an extensive package of rights that ensures we can offer the best of the Games, across TV, radio, online and digital, maximising the reach and impact of the BBC.”
President and CEO of Discovery Communications David Zaslav said the partnership was a win for UK sports fans and an exciting new chapter for the two broadcasters.
“For 30 years, our two organisations have chartered new frontiers with co-production partnerships in factual and natural history programming. Now we join together once again to bring the most compelling stories of human ambition, sacrifice and achievement to people across the UK” he said.
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