Rounding up Paris 2024
Posted on Mar 13, 2025 by FEED Staff
Au revoir Paris 2024
As the Olympics is one of the most significant events in sports broadcast, FEED has been on the front lines reporting back on all things Paris throughout the year. Here’s our final round-up of the innovation presented by the Summer Games
Words Oliver Webb | Images Getty Images for IOC
The first place everyone looks to gauge broadcast success is, of course, the ratings. Following this year’s Summer Games, broadcasters around the globe were quick to confirm strong viewing figures throughout the entirety of the event. This success, though a great representation of broadcast wins, carried a heavier weight than usual. With the pandemic wiping out live audiences and hugely limiting the previous Olympics in Tokyo, there were justified concerns surrounding viewing interest in the lead-up to the first post-pandemic Games.
Although Paris got off to a damp start (both in terms of weather and location!), its performance and delivery – athletically and technically – was nothing short of remarkable.
With many new records broken, we also witnessed one of the closest races in 100m sprint history, after Noah Lyles took home the gold medal for Team USA – winning by just 0.005 seconds. Meanwhile, in the women’s 100m final, Julien Alfred took gold and became St Lucia’s first ever medal winner. Botswana, Dominica and Guatemala also won their first ever gold medals. Sweden’s Armand ‘Mondo’ Duplantis took home gold in the men’s pole vault, achieving a remarkable 6.25m. French athletes were also stars of the show, with swimmer Léon Marchand winning four gold medals alone. Celebrity endorsement also played a key role in boosting figures, with Snoop Dogg’s antics drawing in viewers across the globe and significantly increasing ratings for NBC.
Breakdancing also made its debut this year (although is set to be discontinued – yes, we’re looking at you Australia), while skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing all proved to be successful with audiences, having first been introduced during the Tokyo Olympics.
Beyond Athletic prowess, Raygun and Snoop Dogg – and with more than 3800 hours of live sport to cover – make no mistake in thinking the coverage was a simple feat. As ever, the Olympics was a phenomenal undertaking for broadcasters around the world, and one that demanded the very best media tech had to offer.
Parisian projection
To capture an event of such scope, the Olympics selected Panasonic as a worldwide partner in the audio, TV and video equipment category. Panasonic first became an official worldwide partner of the Olympic Games in 1987 and expanded its partnership to the Paralympic Games from 2014 onward. For the 2024 Paris Games, Panasonic supplied audio visual solutions like professional displays, broadcast production equipment and projection systems. “We delivered more than 700 units, begins Andre Meterian, director of professional video systems and manager for the Paris 2024 Games.
Panasonic’s IT/IP platform Kairos delivered video content to large LED screens at nearly all 26 competition venues. “We also supported the Paralympics opening,” he adds. “Panasonic is primarily used for what we call sports presentation, providing feeds to OBS. We had Kairos units operating across the venues – mostly one per venue, though sometimes one would serve up to three venues, which is one of the beauties of the IP network. On top of that, we also supplied a whole range of studio cameras, camcorders and PTZ cameras – from press room set-ups through to studio cameras with HF receivers for crowd or interview coverage.”
All the big sports venues were very well equipped throughout the Games. “When you decide to put something on the Place de la Concorde square, however – where there is usually nothing but cars – that’s where things become more complicated,” adds Meterian.
“Overall, I was surprised by how quiet it was to operate,” he continues. “I recall how stressful it was in some cases, such as during the London Olympics 12 years ago with different technologies. Even though Panasonic is the prime contractor, we cannot do everything by ourselves. We are talking about hundreds of people working every day during the Games to cover the venues and ceremonies.”
Panasonic was also extremely careful about where all its products came from due to the brand’s green initiatives. “In the past, we supplied products from Japan and returned them after the Games. This time, we worked closely with European companies, allowing the products to remain in Europe post-Games.”
Technical Triumphs
5G transformed this year’s Summer Games and helped deliver seamless coverage of the events. The Games also set new records for LiveU, with Paris serving as the most successful deployment in the company’s history. “Our LiveU IP-video Ecosystem was the backbone for our customers’ live streaming, representing a nearly 40% increase compared to the Tokyo Games,” says Omer Feingold, LiveU vice president of sales engineering and global events management.
The deployment handled a vast 62TB of data transmission. With over 1000 LiveU portable units in action, serving broadcasters from 62 countries and delivering over 70,000 hours of live broadcasts, the event set new benchmarks for the use of cellular technology when it comes to global news and sports coverage.
“For the Games in Paris, LiveU built on this high-performance package, making slight adjustments to add a France-specific profile to each unit – allowing full use of the special infrastructure set-up for the event,” explains Feingold.
The LiveU global team spent well over a year planning this project across all continents, emphasising its scale. “We’ve come a long way from first covering the marathon transmission at the Beijing Summer Games in 2008 to dynamic live productions – capturing everything from boat rides on the Seine during the opening ceremony to inside scoops from the athletes’ camps, providing backup for the main competitions and broadcasting live from the venues,” adds Feingold.
LiveU’s IP 5G bonding technology, with optimised data plans, was also in play, and the company’s LU800 multicamera encoders enabled broadcasters to bring all the action to viewers back home, without the restriction of traditional broadcast equipment. “The encoders were deployed all around Paris, including the venues (both inside media zones for press conferences and also on the floor, as close as possible to the action). Some of the content was put live on air and others were recorded for future use.”
Beyond the Sea
The Summer Games this year stretched far beyond the French capital. Football was hosted across several cities in addition to Paris, including Bordeaux, Lyon, Nantes, Nice and Saint-Étienne. Basketball and handball also put on events in Lille, while Marseille played host to the sailing. The surfing competition was held on the other side of the globe in Teahupo’o, Tahiti. France Télévisions leveraged the latest 5G broadcast transmission innovations from Haivision and Obvios for the event. The coverage included interviews with the athletes in the Olympic Village, as well as live shots from a boat-based camera. Fully produced content was then transported to France Télévisions’ broadcast production centre in Paris for broadcast across its networks using Haivision Streamhub’s IP gateway capabilities.
“Utilising the latest technology – including a private 5G cellular network from Obvios and the cellular contribution solutions from Haivision – enabled us to provide viewers with unprecedented UHD coverage of the athletes before and after the surfing competition during the Olympic Games,” states Thierry Jacob, director of overseas resources and development, France Télévisions.
“The technology powering the work in Tahiti revolutionised the way France Télévisions’ overseas production team worked – and brought viewers closer to both the competitions and athletes than ever before.”
Visionary visuals
We’ve covered transmission and delivery, but what were viewers around the world actually seeing at the other end?
For NBC viewers, Chyron’s Prime platform was used to elevate storytelling capabilities. The figures indicated that more than 30 million people tuned in to NBC’s TV and streaming platforms to watch the Games. “There were 32 sports this year, which is a wealth of information and data,” begins Nikole McStanley, Chyron product portfolio director for the live production platform.
How do you ensure that translation engages viewers in the most compelling way? There’s also the challenge of making that translation work across continents, she elaborates.
“You’re dealing with two different frame rates. In Prime’s application, we have the flexibility to design in one frame rate and set the output to another, converting it to play at the correct speed, which significantly reduces the need for re-rendering. This flexibility allows the Olympics to be held anywhere in the world, with Prime serving as the tool to help handle that challenge.”
NBC Sports designs custom packages for every single Olympic Games. These packages are uniquely designed graphics which only exist for that particular Olympics. “NBC Sports has a dedicated design team who design and customise everything to capture the feel of that city,” explains McStanley.
“They will employ specific fonts that embody that Paris feel, which includes a lot of art nouveau. Much of the background clips were specific to the city as well, including the cityscapes. They then had a fast turnaround for the team to build an extensive package. Prime gives them the ability to build complicated graphics quickly.”
Prime 4.10 introduced the capability and support for NDI, HDR and HLG, as part of the NDI 6 advanced SDK. “This was only just released in April of 2024, and we then used it for the Games this summer,” McStanley details. “That was a key technology addition for them. They also utilised one of our features: the ability to add a custom LUT to your output channel.
“We collaborated closely with their team to make sure it covered their specific, complicated tetrahedral support. A lot of mathematical adjustments were involved, with our developers going back and forth to make sure it was exactly what they wanted and needed.”
An important factor for NBC Sports was making sure that an emotional connection with the viewers was established. “It was such a pleasure working with NBC Sports, especially David Melfi and his design team. It’s all about crafting an immersive experience so the viewer feels more involved and engaged,” remarks McStanley.
“Making sure viewers feel like they’re part of the experience – having that deeper connection almost as if they’re alongside the athlete – is really important in the younger generation. They aren’t just watching on traditional TV; they’re on OTT platforms and need to feel like they’re part of it.”
American Made
Tom Cruise rounded off Paris 2024 in style, abseiling off the roof of the Stade de France and retrieving the Olympic flag, before a pre-recorded skydive over the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles. Set to host the 2028 Summer Olympics, LA last held the Games back in 1932, and again in 1984, becoming the third three-time host city after London and Paris.
New ideas and technologies are already being implemented for future Games. With 6G poised to roll out in 2030, the 2032 Olympics in Brisbane will be the first event of its kind to enjoy the benefits of the next-generation network, including more XR and metaverse technologies.
Broadcasters are finding innovative ways to engage with younger audiences, and this year’s Summer Games and Paralympics proved to be a huge success in providing exciting content across numerous platforms, drawing in a younger demographic. “When it comes to watching the Olympics in 2032, we can firstly expect more expansive and immersive viewing experiences,” summarises Philippe Guillotel, a distinguished scientist at Interdigital.
“VR and XR will enable viewers to share and enjoy live experiences remotely – whether that is seeing a race or a match from an athlete’s personal viewpoint or recreating the atmosphere in stadiums. A mix of video, audio and haptic feedback will build on the realism of these experiences, transporting them directly into the action.”
He concludes: “Currently, VR and XR are singular experiences. But fans enjoy the social element that comes with sports – and fully immersive tech has the potential to emulate this. That being said, the technology must catch up to the hype for ultra-realistic experiences to come to life.”
This feature was first published in the Winter 2024 issue of FEED.
