Olympics fans could miss major moments due to ‘pinch points’ on BBC coverage during Paris 2024, warns chief
FANS could miss the most dramatic moments of the Paris Olympics – it has been warned by the man in charge of the BBC’s coverage.
Head of major events, Ron Chakraborty, at the broadcaster Ron Chakraborty has admitted that if big moments happen at the same time then some could be put on a delay.
The BBC is limited to showing Olympic action live on one linear and one digital channel.
This is down to the main Olympic rights being owned by an American pay-TV company since 2018.
This means that if Team GB are competing in three major events or “pinch points” at the same time then viewers may have to wait to find out results of one of them.
Chakraborty has admitted that the majority of the BBC’s viewership comes from the BBC’s two main streams of the tournament.
This was still the case when the broadcaster had 24 live streams during the 2012 and 2016 games.
Chakraborty said: “The vast majority of people just watch the first two channels because as much as we make all the plans around it, I think most of the public won’t have a massive spreadsheet.
“They say to us ‘I’m going to hand my remote control over to you.
“You tell me what I should be watching. I’ll trust that if I watch BBC One, keep up with the live text or listen to Five Live – I will get every big story going’.”
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Coverage of the games in Paris this summer will start at 8am and run throughout the day.
The Guardian have claimed that schedulers have spoken to Team GB about the coverage of events.
It has been suggested that the athletes will have to “manage expectations” of long-running events such as road cycling.
While team sports such as hockey are unlikely to see games shown in full.
Chakraborty added: “We’ve done a lot with Team GB, and I’ve spoken to the individual comms leads for the sports to say we will be there for their medal moments, but we won’t be able to show every minute of everyone of their athletes.”
He has also been asked if the BBC has made plans to avoid announcing results on Twitter before it is shown on television.
However, this may not be avoidable.
Chakraborty said: “We had one incident in 16 days last time where that happened and it was a semi-final, it wasn’t a gold medal.
“If we do have ‘three into one moments’ where we’re going to be a little bit late on [the coverage], the one thing we’re not going to do is tell our social media team to delay.
“If someone’s gone through then it’s going to be on the radio, it’s going to be everywhere else.
“I think all we can do is [tell the viewer] it’s happening and that we will be showing it as soon as possible.”
