japanese community, as well as managing some of the uncertainty about what we could do on site. things like accessing athletes is a bit trickier at this olympics, you know, getting access and moving around venues is a bit trickier. and there s practical examples like the mix zone where the athletes, after they ve won their medal or lost their heat, or whatever it might be, have to walk through the mix zone where all the broadcasters of the world can have a chance to interview them. but just social distancing now means that mix zone is really long, and the practicalities of being able to manage that in a covid environment mean it s more challenging. so there s lots of practical challenges around what you need to do, and we ve had to adapt to those and leaving some people at home unfortunately has been part of that. minal, has the pandemic reduced the value of live sport for broadcasters? so, we have seen a downward pressure on sports rights - across the last year . we ve seen it in
watched cricket before this year. so that suggests we are reaching a new audience. and we were just blown away by the two opening games the women s opening game got 1.9 million, which was the peak, which is great for the women s game in domestic cricket. and the men s peaked at 2.5 million so, so far, we ve been really encouraged and blown away by those figures. we ll be hearing more from you on that later, as well as brian henderson, director of cricket for sky sports. but let s start with gb s gold medals, and the olympics coverage on tv this week. andrew georgiou is president of sport at discovery andrew, you are the main broadcaster for the olympics in britain and much of europe, just give us an idea of how big this operation is for you. can you give us a sense of the scale? yes, it s an enormous operation, that s for sure, notjust the broadcast operation, but the entire olympics in tokyo is tens of thousands of people who have gathered, 11,000 athletes plus another 10,000 of
about simplification of graphics and language, so more people could understand the sport. the fourth pillar was about getting close to the players and player storytelling, and avatars and technology we are doing a fantastic interview today with the female leg spinner firm scotland who plays for birmingham phoenix. finally, the fifth pillar was about a force for good, which is about our diversity and inclusion plans and links to sustainability, and opportunities for young people. so it s been a really well thought out, planned tournament. and the coverage was definitely going to be much more entertaining, but probably no more than that for sky viewers. you ve talked about how you obviously want to reach out to a wider audience, people who may not have watched cricket before do you know yet how successful it has been in shifting to a new audience? have you got figures that can let us know that? well, we do have figures and demographics. i don t have them exactly to hand, it s definit
hello. what a summer of sport this is. sport is all over tv, and coverage of sports events is what we are focusing on today. the olympics is on, we ve just had the euros, and there s a new cricket competition called the hundred on primetime bbc, as well as sky. but in this age of infinite choice, live sport has to compete to hold our attention. does sport need to be more attractive than an hour of fortnite or netflix, or tiktok? and has the amount of money tv companies are prepared to pay for sport fallen during the pandemic? well, these are some of the questions that my all star panel of sporting supremos will answer today and between them, they are reaching hundreds of millions of viewers. they are andrew georgiou, president of sport at discovery, and he joins us from tokyo,
was probably too late. so for us, shortening the game was really important hence why the hundred came around. as we ve said, the rights are shared with the bbc and sky. earlier on, i spoke to bryan henderson, director of cricket at sky sports, and i asked him at what point they got involved in the hundred. this is all part of a new television rights deal formed in 2017, it was initially supposed to be a 2020 competition, as part of a new five year deal that ran from 2020 24. and yeah, like i said, it was meant to be t20 competition they came to us in 2018, i think, and suggested that the format change to 100. and at the time it was a really interesting idea and since then, we ve worked really closely with the ecb and the bbc in terms of forming this new competition. it s quite interesting that a broadcaster is involved in creating essentially a new format for sport. yeah, and it s been a really