Written by Liz Gannes
Posted Monday, August 4, 2008 at 8:47 AM PT

YouTube to Get Olympics, But (Probably) Not for You

The Olympics will be officially shown on YouTube in an effort to preempt pirated online footage, the International Olympic Committee said today. But the eleventh-hour announcement only covers 77 territories “across Africa, Asia and the Middle East, including India, Republic of Korea, Nigeria and Indonesia” where the rights to the online broadcast have not already been sold.

The channel — which is to be geo-blocked to everyone else — will include highlights produced by the IOC’s broadcasting group.

It’s interesting that YouTube is being used as the default here. In the U.S., for instance, there will be much broader coverage available online, but users will have to download Microsoft’s Silverlight and wait for the events broadcast on TV to be posted after a delay. A simple YouTube channel seems like a much more lightweight option.

I’m sure YouTube will be screening and blocking additional uploads of the geo-blocked official channel’s footage, but it will be highly surprising (and unprecedented, in recent years) if the site doesn’t become a repository of all sorts of easier-to-access highlights as well.

In other online video-related Olympics news, Adobe said today it will help power the official Olympics video portal in China and Macau. We had noted last night that Brightcove KK is powering the Japanese equivalent.

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Topic: Distribution

Comments (1)

Well its better than nothing!

Dieta dos Pontos — 9:52 AM on October 6, 2008 Reply

Linkbacks (4)

[...] problem and is trying to address it by posting authorized videos on YouTube. Too bad these clips won’t be accessible to folks in the United States. So where will U.S. Olympians go? Hard to say, to be honest. There’s a plethora of options [...]

Pirate Olympics: 5 Alternative Ways to Watch… — 1:46 PM on August 5, 2008
[...] and 77 territories, including Korea, India, Indonesia, and parts of Africa will get Olympic video on YouTube, which of course uses Flash. In most of the world, if you’re watching the Olympics online, [...]

SitePoint Blogs » Adobe Wins Gold in… — 2:13 PM on August 5, 2008
[...] problem and is trying to address it by posting authorized videos on YouTube. Too bad these clips won’t be accessible to folks in the United States. So where will U.S. Olympians go? Hard to say, to be honest. There’s a plethora of options out [...]

Five Alternative Ways to Watch the Olympics… — 7:53 AM on August 9, 2008
[...] and 77 territories, including Korea, India, Indonesia, and parts of Africa will get Olympic video on YouTube, which of course uses Flash. In most of the world, if you’re watching the Olympics online, [...]

World IT News › Adobe Wins Gold in… — 9:33 AM on August 11, 2008