Streaming the Olympics in MENA

How Paris 2024 captivated audiences on TOD

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This isn't my picture, but it's absolutely stunning, don't you think?

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Today’s program

Today, I’m taking a look at how TOD, the streaming service of beIN Media Group, brought the excitement of the Paris 2024 Summer Olympic Games to the MENA region.

1. The incredible figures from Paris 2024

2. The Olympics on TOD

3. So What?

And… Action!

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The incredible figures from Paris 2024

Yes, The Streaming Lab is all about streaming media, but I couldn’t talk about the Olympics without taking a moment to look back at the sports highlights from the Paris 2024 Games:

• 19 days of competition

• Athletes from the territories of 206 National Olympic Committees and the IOC Refugee Olympic Team represented

• 32 sports/48 disciplines

• 35 competition venues

• 4 additional sports proposed by the Paris 2024 Organising Committee: skateboarding, sport climbing, surfing and breaking

• 754 competition sessions

• 329 medal events

• 5,084 medals have been produced, using 18 grammes of iron from the Eiffel Tower

• 20 mixed-gender medal events

• 125 Olympic records broken in 10 disciplines

• 32 world records broken in 8 disciplines

Paris 2024 reached billions of people around the world thanks to new media rights agreements and the work of the Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) team.

Let’s check out the impressive media setup that helped make these Games such a success:

• 36 Media Rights-Holders (including beIN Media Group in MENA, and its streaming service TOD)

• 182 broadcast sublicensees

• Over half of the world’s population is expected to have engaged via broadcast or digital channels with the Olympic Games Paris 2024

• 11,000+ hours produced by OBS

• 8,300+ broadcast personnel

• 1,000+ OBS cameras

• 3,680 microphones (I like this one :)

• OBS's online content delivery platform, Content+, has become the primary method of delivering short-form and social media content – more than 17,000 pieces are available (of which approximately 790 pieces are vertical content designed specifically for social media)

• This has resulted in a total of more than 113,000 downloads over the course of the Games

• Over 440 Athlete Moments completed, more than double that of Tokyo 2020

• 70+ countries connecting to athletes via the Athlete Moment

• AI used with automatic highlights generation – over 95,000 highlights created

• 4,155 accredited press

• 2,113 news organisations

• 1,578 photographers

I’ve been following Laurent Eric Le Lay, Director of Sports at France Télévisions, on LinkedIn for the past two weeks, and he’s shared some fascinating audience insights in France:

• The opening ceremony gathered over 24.4 million viewers in France, marking a historic audience. As a comparison, 24.08 million supporters watched the World Cup final between Argentina and France on December 18, 2022.

• The first week was followed by 57.6 million French viewers on our channels and the france.tv platform.

• The france.tv platform is hitting record highs: already 138 million video views in just 10 days!

I’ll keep you posted if beIN Media Group/TOD decides to release any audience results!

The Olympics on TOD

Now, let’s head back to the MENA region and check out the official streaming platform for the Paris 2024 Olympics: TOD from beIN Media Group.

Just a quick reminder: Back in 2015, the International Olympic Committee announced that beIN Media Group had secured the exclusive broadcast rights in MENA for the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, as well as the 2022 and 2024 Games. At that time, the host cities Beijing and Paris hadn't been chosen yet.

TOD homepage

For the summer games in Paris, TOD added a special Olympics section. This hub includes the following carousels:

1. Live Channel

2. Olympic Daily Highlights

3. Day -2 to 16

4. Meet the Athletes

5. Olympic Sports

6. Documentaries

7. Sports Guide

More details below ↓

LIVE CHANNELS

TOD offered live content of the olympics on 3 channels:

• Olympic Channel News

• beIN Sports

• beIN Sports News

Most of the content on those channels were available with two audio tracks: Arabic and English.

HIGHLIGHTS

The Daily Highlights was a carousel of videos in English, offering a 1-hour roundup. It was perfect if you couldn’t spend the whole day on your TV!

DAYS -2 TO 16

I you missed the live, TOD offered most of the events On Demand.

🚨 Tom Cruise alert 🚨

By the way, if you missed the closing ceremony from yesterday night, you can watch it here HERE.

MEET THE ATHLETES

Meet The Athletes featured 9 short profiles, giving a glimpse into the lives of athletes and teams from different sports.

1. Lebron James (USA - Basketball)

2. Delicious Orie (GB - Boxing)

3. Vincent Matheron (France - Skateboarding)

4. Katie Moon (USA - Athletics, Pole Vault)

5. Team Australia (Swimming)

6. Suni Lee (USA - Artistic Gymnastics)

7. Team Fiji (Rugby)

8. Refugee Olympic Team (Judo)

9. Danka Bartekova (Slovakia - Shooting)

OLYMPIC SPORTS

This carousel offered on-demand content organized by sport. Here is below the 2nd level-page for Skateboarding:

DOCUMENTARIES

TOD also created original content for the Olympics, including 3 docuseries focused on different sports: high jump, sailing, and archery.

Can we have two gold?: In Tokyo 2021, a gold medal is shared by two athletes for the first time in more than 100 years and in the most dramatic of circumstances. This story of friendship, pain and redemption explains the reasons behind that decision.

Congratulations to Qatari Mutaz Essa Barshim for winning the Bronze medal this year!

Chasing Tokyo: Chasing Tokyo follows a small group of athletes from the British Sailing Team who venture to one of the most uncertain Olympic Games in history as the world, and their sport, changes around them.

Target Paris: Three-part mini-series releasing in the lead-up to the Olympics, chronicling the process of qualifying through the journeys of four archers: Lisa Barbelin and Audrey Adiceom (France), Kim Woojin (Korea) and Bernardo Oliviera (Brazil).

Congratulations to Lisa Barbelin and Kim Woojin on their medals in Paris!

SPORTS GUIDE

Finally, the Sports Guide carousel provides short videos that explain the key rules of several Olympic sports. It’s super helpful! Ever heard of speed climbing or combined boulder and lead?

So what?

With over 11,000 hours of content available, coming from 754 competition sessions, I assume the biggest challenge for most streaming platforms was presenting it in a clear and user-friendly way, making it easy for their audience to follow the Olympics live or on-demand.

From my perspective, watching the Olympics on TOD was pretty seamless, and they did a solid job creating a dedicated hub for the event.

For the next Olympics (if beIN still holds the rights for the region), I would suggest to put more focus on athletes from the Middle East and North Africa, with different types of content to make it easier for users to find and enjoy:

• Athlete Schedule: Include a guide that lets users know when MENA athletes are competing.

• Best of MENA Athletes: Offer on-demand content that highlights the top performances from regional athletes.

• Reactions and interviews: Feature post-event reactions and interviews with MENA athletes.

Did you find any cool features on your local streaming app? Reply to this email, and I’ll update my article with a shoutout!

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I’ll wrap up this article on a positive note by highlighting the medals won by athletes from the MENA region:

Bahrain:

• Winfred YAVI - Athletics - Women's 3000m Steeplechase (Gold)

• Salwa Eid NASER - Athletics - Women's 400m (Silver)

• Gor MINASYAN - Weightlifting - Men's +102kg (Bronze)

• Akhmed TAZHUDINOV - Wrestling - Men's Freestyle 97kg (Gold)

Algeria:

• Kaylia NEMOUR - Artistic Gymnastics - Women's Uneven Bars (Gold)

• Djamel SEDJATI - Athletics - Men's 800m (Bronze)

• Imane KHELIF - Boxing - Women's 66kg (Gold)

Egypt:

• Mohamed ELSAYED - Fencing - Men's Épée Individual (Bronze)

• Ahmed ELGENDY - Modern Pentathlon - Men's Individual (Gold)

• Sara AHMED - Weightlifting - Women's 81kg (Silver)

Tunisia:

• Fares FERJANI - Fencing - Men's Sabre Individual (Silver)

• Firas KATOUSSI - Taekwondo - Men -80kg (Gold)

• Mohamed Khalil JENDOUBI - Taekwondo - Men -58kg (Bronze)

Morocco

• Soufiane EL BAKKALI - Athletics - Men's 3000m Steeplechase (Gold)

• Team Morocco - Football Men (Bronze)

Jordan

• Zaid KAREEM - Taekwondo - Men -68kg (Silver)

Qatar

• Mutaz Essa BARSHIM - Men's High Jump (Bronze)

I’m confident we’ll see even more athletes from the MENA region at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, and more medals too!

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That’s all for today, how Paris 2024 captivated audiences on TOD. If you enjoyed this breakdown, please consider sharing it with your friends and colleagues!

I hope everyone has a great week, see you online next Monday. Until then, enjoy the new season of Snowpiercer on STARZ ON. Set over seven years after the world has turned into a frozen wasteland, Snowpiercer focuses on the remaining fragments of humanity living aboard a constantly moving train.

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The Streaming Lab is a weekly newsletter exploring the trends that matter to streaming professionals in the MENA region. If you are not already a subscriber, sign up and receive it directly in your inbox every Monday.

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