Creative Technology CEO Dave Crump and Panasonic field marketing manager Ollie Newland were speaking at the Broadcast Sport Tech Innovation Forum

Olympics 2020 Tokyo 2

Creative Technology CEO Dave Crump and Panasonic field marketing manager Ollie Newland have revealed how the companies will be approaching Beijing 2022.

The businesses worked together on the production of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, and will be using that experience to aim for more at the next IOC event. 

Crump explained: “We’re seeing a massive shift in how large screen display is used in sport production, which is very much being driven by Panasonic. It adds a great dimension to the broadcast by adding to the production value of the athletes coming in.

“You’ve seen huge growth on projection on the field of play, such as at the World Athletics Championships in 2019. It was absolutely spectactular, and was the catalyst that got it used in Tokyo, where they did the 100m using the same hardware that was used for the ceremonies.”

This has led to Crump revealing that: “At every ice venue we’re doing projection onto the field of play,” for Beijing 2022.

Newland also pointed to the simultaneous 4K/HD production, which is likely to continue during Beijing 2022: Tokyo 2020 was the first 4K/HD simulcast which meant that it required the largest number of video feeds in the history of the Olympic Games, around twice the amount used at Rio 2016.”

Other improvements have been around environmental factors, with less movement of both people and kit. Crump said: “Beijing is coming incredibly quickly, and one of the benefits of Tokyo being delayed is the two are back to back, and most of the gear we had in Tokyo went straight to Beijing. Normally we would have shipped it all out to Europe and back.”

Newland added: “Usually Panasonic have just over 2000 employees working on the Olympics at any one point. This year there was a real drive to be carbon neutral, so a lot of the training in advance was done remotely.”