Plan For Web Co-Op
15 May 1998The International Olympic Committee and Sydney Olympics organisers are considering setting up a "super" Internet site for the Sydney Olympics which would pool information from the major parties involved in the Games.
The plan would see international corporate sponsors, official technology providers IBM and major broadcasters including the US network NBC contributing to the official SOCOG site rather than running their own Web sites for the 2000 Games.
The idea came up during discussions of plans for the SOCOG Internet site at IBM headquarters in the US last week. The meetings were attended by senior officials from SOCOG and the IOC.
Speaking from IOC headquarters in Lausanne this week, the IOC marketing manager, Mr Michael Payne, said: "There are discussions going on to see where we can get people interested in pooling resources as opposed to [all doing their own separate Web site]."
He said the IOC would not relax its rule that the Internet could not carry moving images of the Games.
However, he said the Internet could complement the role of the official television broadcasters by including a wide range of results and other information on the official Internet site.
The Internet first played a role in the Olympics in the Summer Games of 1996 in Atlanta, when the organising committee had an official Web site for the first time. The IOC's Olympic technology provider, IBM, has boasted that the official Nagano Olympic site had more than 650 million hits during the Winter Games in February this year.
This has led to some speculation about the Internet's potential to overtake television as the main way for people to follow the Games.
But Mr Payne said that despite the big increase in Internet use between 1996 and 1998, its use in Nagano was overshadowed by television viewer figures for the Games.
In the US, 1.5 million people had looked at the Nagano Games Internet site, compared with more than 180 million people watching the Games on television.
But it was clear the Internet had the potential to play a bigger role in the Sydney Olympics than it had in any other Games.
"It's a great asset for promotion [of the Olympics] and there are revenue-generating aspects of it down the road," he said.
"All expectations would be that the Sydney site would become the most successful site ever."
Mr Payne said Sydney Olympic organisers were keen to introduce a new updated Web site for SOCOG well ahead of the Games.
"Everyone is keen to get the concept together as quickly as possible," he said.
