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NBC’s Coverage Of Rio 2016 Will Be Bigger And More Digital Than Ever

The 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro are just over a month away. NBCUniversal’s coverage of the 31st Olympiad will be bigger and more digitally ubiquitous than ever.

NBCUniversal will have roughly 6,755 hours of coverage across 19 days, bookended by the Opening and Closing Ceremonies. Women’s soccer officially kicks off their coverage on August 3rd. Rio is just one hour ahead of the Eastern Time zone. This will allow NBC to provide their U.S. audience with the most live coverage ever. Television broadcasts will run across 11 different networks. Some of which will be live from two different state-of-the-art studios on Rio’s Copacabana Beach.

The 2,084 hours of television broadcasts will run across TELEMUNDO, CNBC, NBC Sports Network, Golf Channel, Bravo and many more. NBC will feature 260.5 hours of coverage in primetime, daytime and late night. NBC will cover the most popular sports including swimming, gymnastics, track and field, diving, volleyball and basketball.

But perhaps most impressively, their live stream online and digital coverage will be very extensive. Playmaker Media, a new NBC digital venture will power their live streaming digital coverage. NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app will live stream 4,500 hours worth of content. For the third straight Olympics NBC digital platforms will allow users to watch every second of every competition. The live stream coverage will be featured on desktop, mobile, tablet and connected TVs.

For the first time ever NBC will provide some coverage in 4K UHD. Virtual Reality programming will also be featured in a small capacity. Their 83 hours of 4K coverage will not be live. Highlights of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, swimming, track and field, basketball and men’s soccer will be made available the next day. There are no specific details regarding their VR coverage as of now.

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Basketball and soccer fans will be excited to know that NBC will have two specialty channels, one for each sport, providing almost 800 hours of game coverage.

NBC also recently partnered with BuzzFeed to bolster their Olympic coverage for a younger audience. BuzzFeed will produce special features that will be pushed heavily on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and SnapChat. The plan is to try and draw more young viewers to their massive live streams or broadcast coverage through social media channels.

NBC spent $1.23 billion for the rights to air Rio 2016 in the U.S. Their investment has almost already paid off, as they have received an estimated $1 billion in advertising investments.

Where have we seen this before?

A photo posted by NBC Olympics (@nbcolympics) on

They are making a heavy push to be more digital and mobile focused this summer. @nbcolympics is already very active across many different social media platforms. For fans who simply cannot wait until August 5th for the Opening Ceremony, every U.S. Olympic Trial event is currently live streaming.

NBC’s broadcast television coverage will be extensive as always. And this year because of an advantageous time zone it will almost all be live. However their live streaming and digital coverage is where Olympic fans will have access to all of the sports and supplemental coverage they could desire.

 

 

 

 

 

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