TOKYO OLYMPIC GAMES: OBS
OBS Director of Digital Content Production Matt Millington on Widgets, Athlete Moments, VR O
BS puts a lot of energy and time into digital fan engagement offerings, so what happens when the fans aren’t in the stands supporting their nation, and cheering on their friends and family? For OBS, it meant filling the gap with a new type of digital experience, one that not only can get virtual fans into the venues but also connect athletes with their friends and families immediately following a competition. Oh, and OBS had to do it quickly. “It was a very late project that we basically started working on about four months ago when the announcement was made that international fans would not be allowed into the venues,” said Matt Millington, OBS, director of digital content production. “So, we started working on three products, two of them are geared towards the fans and one is geared towards the athletes.” The two fan experiences were the Cheer Map and the Fan Video Wall. “They are widgets that can be integrated on any rightholder’s page or any other partner like federations and national Olympic committees,” said Millington. “Cheer Map is a widget that allows fans to cheer for their country of choice and while it does default to where the IP is address is based, they can choose another country.” Once in the widget, fans could virtually clap for their favorite nation’s athletes. “We have a heat map of the world where you can see bubbles of support for different nations,” said Millington. “Interestingly, we’re getting a lot of traffic from India, a lot from Japan, obviously lot from Australia and we credit that to the time zone. But we have 205 countries or national Olympic committees and all of them have had cheers.” As of July 30, more than 120 million fans had cheered and some also uploaded a selfie video from their phone or their laptop. Those videos were placed into a video matrix with 45 fans and those videos were then played out on the big screens at all the venues and made available to rightsholders. “It allows fans to virtually be there and the sports presentation teams who control the video scoreboards can utilize both the map and the video,” added Millington. The big addition, however, was the Athlete Moment, as it connected
52
SPORTSTECHJOURNAL / FALL 2021
Matt Millington and the OBS digital team worked hard to connect athletes with family and friends during the Games. athletes with family and friends via video immediately after their competition. “It’s been my favorite part of the project,” said Millington. “We’ve set up Athlete Moment viewing stations in selected venues, and we positioned it in a good place right before the mixed zone so it’s right in their path.” Millington said there have been some fantastic moments, with the best usually involving a family gathered in a room having a watch party. “It’s not the first time that this has been done but definitely the first time at this scale,” he said. “We have an operations center in Belgium, with a large team who are connecting with families prior to and during the event. And then we link them to the athlete.” Key was making it simple for families at home to use. An athlete signed up to be part of the program and got a link that they then shared with family and friends. “The family and friends click on that link and are connected to the team in Belgium who tells them what is going to happen and about things like delay,” he said. It also appeared to be one of those things born of the pandemic that will stick around. “We think it’s here to stay and we haven’t been able to cover every continued on page 56
