Olympic broadcasting debuts in the cloud at Tokyo 2020

Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) and Alibaba Cloud launched OBS Cloud, supporting service delivery for Rights-Holding Broadcasters (RHBs) for the first time during the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020. 

Built upon the platform provided by Alibaba Cloud, OBS Cloud offers new models for content delivery that drive operational efficiency and greater agility, and is designed to help transform the media industry for the digital era.

“The partnership with Alibaba Cloud is transforming how we broadcast the Olympic Games to the widest possible audience,” said Yiannis Exarchos, OBS Chief Executive Officer.

“This is perhaps the biggest technological change in the broadcasting industry for more than half a century since the introduction of satellite transmission, which was introduced to Olympic broadcast coverage for the first time at Tokyo 1964,” said Exarchos.

Leveraging Alibaba technologies, Content+, OBS’ content delivery platform is now fully migrated to the cloud for delivering short-form content, content asset management and content production.

For Tokyo 2020, 17 RHB organisations and four news agencies have subscribed to the full service of receiving thousands of short-form content clips produced by the OBS Content+ crew through a user-friendly web-based interface. 

These clips can be accessible by the RHBs’ digital and social media teams from any location in the world to supplement their own Olympic coverage.

Through Content+, RHBs are able to access all Olympic content produced by the OBS including live content as it is being produced. For this, 31 RHB organisations have signed up for this full service to be able to easily browse through the low-resolution files in near real-time, and retrieve any content in any of their global facilities.

As part of post-production workflow, OBS will use the Content+ platform for remote editing and standards conversion — a feature that will be extended as a service to the RHBs for future Olympics.

“The agility that comes with cloud infrastructure allows faster deployment time with fewer onsite resources, while the flexibility of a cloud platform enables remote post-production and production to be done faster – and from any location with an internet connection,” said Selina Yuan, general manager of international business at Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.