TOKYO OLYMPIC GAMES: OBS
OBS CTO Sotiris Salamouris on the Move to UHD, HDR, IP, and Immersive Audio W
hen the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Games ended, OBS CTO Sotiris Salamouris and his team laid out an ambitious vision for the 2020 Tokyo Games. Not only did they want to transition from SDI to IP, but they also wanted to go all UHD and HDR. It was an ambitious plan, but the team pulled it off, despite a pandemic-mandated delay that may have allowed more time for testing and development but also meant less time to get ready for the 2022 Beijing Winter Games. Even with multiple years to plan, there was little in the way of wiggle room because there was always another Olympics to plan for, new technology to embrace, and new projects to launch to better meet the needs of rightsholders. When the Games were delayed by a year, noted Salamouris, it gave the team a bit more time to do testing with broadcasters. But the team tried hard not to change the scope of what they were looking to accomplish as it dealt with other issues, including logistical challenges and, of course, the pandemic. “When the postponement happened,” said Salamouris, during the Games, “we already had about 150 people here in Tokyo. It was a project in and of itself just to figure out how to freeze things and then get people back home. We needed to deal with the situation here, coordinate with Beijing, and then also deal with new requirements from broadcasters, who were all concerned with how they would work remotely and their space inside the IBC.” “It was difficult,” he continued, “because, in order to be ready for the
event, we have a very well-coordinated plan. And we had two areas of difficulty. One was international logistics, which were also affected by the pandemic with frequent flight changes and cancellations. In addition, as though one bad option was not already enough, sea transports were experiencing challenges due to the overall backlog created by the Suez Canal blockage some time ago.” And then there were pandemic issues, he added. Because OBS brings thousands of international staff in to work the Games, the Japanese authorities and the Organizing Committee established a thorough regime to safeguard the health and safety of the international personnel and, of course, the local population. This famous “playbook” mandated rigorous testing and other measures to minimize infection in the Games environment. Salamouris noted that there were some disruptions in OBS operations. Contact tracing on the plane to Tokyo, for example, required some personnel to quarantine, making them unavailable to work. “We had Plan Bs to address such eventualities,” he said. “It is totally impossible to fully predict what kind of impact you may have if someone from your personnel, who have very varying and sometimes unique skillsets, may need to quarantine. “We have the playbook,” he continued, “and people were tested and tested. The reality was that the percentage of positives found was extremely low. However, there were cases where people may have been in the vicinity of suspicious cases or even positives and then had to quarantine. Suddenly, you have people that are essential to your team disappearing, sometimes for two weeks.” Despite the travails, dozens of rightsholders, thousands of production professionals, and thousands of athletes and volunteers were onsite for Tokyo Games. And, although technical innovation may have taken a backseat to the ongoing concerns around COVID-19, it’s important to look at some of the innovations that made these Games arguably the single most impressive technical achievement in the history of sports production. As rightsholders reshaped their plans for the Tokyo Games, the OBS efforts around cloud-based services started to become more important. “They became a OBS’s Sotiris Salamouris inside the OBS Tech Area at the IBC in Tokyo.
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SPORTSTECHJOURNAL / FALL 2021
