It’s worth $60m £33

It’s worth $60m (£33.7m) for each four-year games cycle.For this sort of cash, the sponsors get very little in terms of marketing presence. The Olympics has a clean-event policy, which means TV from Turin will not include corporate logos or perimeter-board advertising.This is how sponsors like it, says Lumme. “They are buying into an association with the Olympic brand, whether that is the lump in the throat, or the values of the movement.”The ultimate alpine challenge Photographer Shaun Botterill will spend the next two weeks clinging to neck-breakingly steep, icy Italian mountainsides. In temperatures of below minus 10 degrees, he’ll be waiting for skiers to flash past in their reflective catsuits, giving him three frames to capture an image.Covering such alpine events typically involves a two-hour mountainside trek, laden with a 20kg equipment pack.

Sponsors distanced themselves.One such company was John Hancock, the New York financial services company; its chief executive publically tore the Olympic rings off his merchandise. This is aimed at preventing TV networks “warehousing” the rights.”We see our primary partners as television broadcasters,” says Lumme “They are becoming multi-media operators. They are best placed to ensure their viewers get the best coverage rather than us trying to guess what is best for the audience.”The corporate sector is also – perhaps surprisingly – showing a keen interest in associating itself with the games.The previous winter games in Salt Lake City were a nadir in the IOC’s long history, tainted by a money for votes corruption scandal. However, to promote broadband as a medium, there is a “use it or lose it” clause. Content such as the Olympics is easily streamed via broadband and mobile phone.

For the IOC, the dilemma is how to extract that extra money without jeopardising the exclusivity of broadcasters.Broadband rights are currently bundled into contracts bought by IOC television partners. Unfortunately, Europe is lagging behind in the evolution of this, and will miss the boat for the World Cup too. In the US, and in markets such as Japan and Korea, HDTV is a very important part of improving television coverage.”It is intriguing to hear the IOC’s commercial head talking so positively about new technology. It was only a short time ago that the IOC took a dim view of the internet as a medium. In Sydney, 2000, at the peak of the dot boom, the IOC prevented coverage of the games on the web.However, the entry of broadband into mainstream media, and impending convergence of broadband delivered television (IPTV) with digital TV, has led to a more enlightened view.This is in part because new media platforms offer a fresh revenue stream. Much of this increase in coverage in the UK is due to the BBC’s expansion into digital television. This means an increase in the corporation’s output, from 100 hours in Salt Lake in 2002 to 500 in Turin.

Few of the 84 sports on offer will fail to make it on to the screen in some form.”For us, these are the high definition games,” says Lumme, “the first time the whole of the Olympics will be broadcast in HDTV. “What the Olympics offers to a television partner is a huge live audience. For free-to-air networks their strength is that for events of national importance they still provide the only way a large proportion of the national audience can be aggregated”.He says beyond the rights fees paid, there is an increase in the hours given over to live coverage of the event by broadcasters. The revenue surge at IOC headquarters in Lucerne is due in no small part to broadcasters’ desire to protect advertising revenue by buying live content not vulnerable to “time shifting”.”There is a trend in increasing rights fees because of the premium on live events, whether that is the election of a Pope or the men’s downhill,” says Lumme. Europe’s free-to-air broadcasters, including the BBC, have agreed to pay $578m (£325m) for the rights to show the Turin Games and 2008 event in Beijing (in a deal brokered by the European Broadcast Union).The same group is to pay $750m for the 2010 and 2012 Games, Vancouver and London.

This would be 40 per cent up on the total for Beijing.The period of the new contracts corresponds with the age of the personal video recorder. Broadcasters also commit up to $150m worth of airtime to promotion of the Olympics through extra programming in the run-up. Jacques Rogge, president of the IOC, has predicted that revenues from broadcast rights for the 2012 London Olympics will top $3.5bn. When it comes to making money, where the IOC leads, others follow.By bundling the Winter Games with the summer version, the IOC has won huge fees from broadcasters. Over the next two weeks the Winter Olympics in Turin will create new heroes from sports as diverse as curling, biathlon and the luge.