The IOC’s streamer strategy to bridge the Games content gap

Simone Biles: Rising’s shortlisting for Outstanding Documentary (Series) at the Primetime Emmys was just part of a continuing IOC strategy to grow its engagement outside of Games. 

“This is a journey that we started a few years ago,” explained IOC television and marketing services managing director Anne-Sophie Voumard. “It’s bridging that gap between the Games, to keep the conversation going and keep those athletes top of mind.”

On top of that, “The key premise was to reach younger audiences beyond the Games themselves,” said Yiannis Exarchos, CEO of Olympic Broadcasting Services - which produced the series in association with Religion of Sports. 

Rising is available on Netflix, as part of a deal which saw the streamer add several shows both before and after the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. Like many rights holders, the IOC is keen to collaborate with streamers like Netflix, Voumard noting, “We want to make sure that we connect with the younger generation that are maybe spending more time watching streaming platforms than traditional television.”

For now, this has been limited to non-live content, but that may not be the case forever. Voumard revealed, “I see no reason why in the future we would not have them as being a media rights holder. You see some of those platforms evolving towards live streaming, and, of course, we keep on monitoring this very closely. Who knows what the future will bring?”

However, while traditional broadcasters such as Warner Bros. Discovery, NBC, and PSBs such as the BBC continue to hold of the live rights, the IOC and OBS want any partnerships with streamers to be, “win-win,” promoting the content that they will be showing. “The view is that bringing more visibility outside the Games is beneficial for everyone,” Exarchos explained, with Voumard adding, “You want Netflix’s audience to be very aware that in a couple of weeks or months time, there’s the Games.”

This doesn’t mean engagement is the only goal - Exarchos was clear that the shows need to be financially viable, and Voumard said, “From a business standpoint, this is new revenue generation for the IOC, because these partnerships have a commercial dimension to them.”

Following the success of this model with Rising, as well as other documentaries such as 72 - A Gathering of Champions (2022-2023) on the 1972 Munich Games, Redeem Team, on the 2008 gold medal-winning US basketball team, and Sprint, a Box-To-Box series going behind the scenes with top sprinters, the IOC and OBS are now looking to expand into other formats - even those not traditionally associated with rights holder content. 

Voumard said, “We’re going to be continuing the storytelling and the type of formats that we have developed with Netflix, but we will also look into other formats, such as animation and theatrical. I think there’s a strong appetite for those stories, because they really tell universal stories of human beings.”

There have already been several conversations related to this, and Voumard believes that partnerships could be announced before the Milano Cortina Winter Games next year, with animation likely to come first.

As for theatrical, “Hollywood is a great temptation,” for Exarchos, with the 2028 Summer Games to take place in Los Angeles, and Voumard is, “expecting that there will be a lot of interest for scripted theatrical,” ahead of those Games. The IOC has dipped its toes into theatrical in the past, with Olympic Dreams, a romcom directed by Jeremy Teicher and featuring Alexi Pappas and Nick Kroll, produced at the athletes village during the 2018 Winter Games in South Korea. 

The pair see this expansion as an exciting area for the organisation, and Voumard summed up, “It’s great to be at the intersection between sports and entertainment. It shows the universality of what we do.”