Threat to internet news coverage
23 April 1998Sports fans will not be able to access moving pictures on the Internet during the Sydney 2000 Games, with International Olympic Committee members seeking to protect the rights of their broadcast sponsors.
IOC marketing director Michael Payne, in Sydney for meetings with Sydney Olympic officials, said yesterday that the technology was moving so fast that the IBM technology contract with Sydney had still be signed. He said the emergence of the Internet was "too soon" for Sydney.
Payne said the problem with allowing moving pictures on the Internet was that the territory that such images were projected to was uncontrolled.
Revenue from television rights worldwide totals $954 million, more than a third of the $2.3 billion Sydney Olympic budget.
"Four years ago there was no Internet," Payne said. "A couple of broadcasters put some moving images on their home page (at the recent Nagano Winter Olympics) and the problem is you can't control it from territory issues, but there were only a couple of instances. "But there will be no moving pictures on the Internet in Sydney."
Payne said the official Winter Olympic home page in Nagano received six million hits from 1.5 million people, a record for a sports home page.
He said the new technology on the Internet was being developed as a promotional tool for the Olympics to deliver more detail to users, not only during the two weeks of the Games, but beyond. "At some stage, Internet and television industries are converging and we have to keep track of that," Payne said. "We don't allow moving images on the Internet, that is kept for the broadcasters. We have to track and monitor it very, very closely; the technology is changing so quickly."
But Payne said the present use of the Internet, as impressive as the figures were, still did not compare with the worldwide TV audience.
