The IOC "wants to make the Olympic Games more attractive for young people through The Olympic Channel," according to Jörn Krieger of BROADBAND TV NEWS. IOC President Thomas Bach said the new TV channel, which will offer Olympic sports 24 hours per day as an OTT service from '16, would be necessary "to retain the relevance of our sports and to root the athletes in the young target group." Bach said that the Olympic Channel, which is currently being built up in Madrid with around 120 employees, "will show a mixture of live sports, stories about athletes and volunteers, news and background information." Bach said that the IOC "used to focus too much on traditional television." To reach young people, an extensive presence on digital platforms "would be necessary." This "would have been a key reason for the allocation of the European TV rights for the Olympic Games" between '18 and '14 to Eurosport’s parent company Discovery. Bach: "The multitude of platforms we will require in future can be offered by Discovery to us, but not by ARD and ZDF" (BROADBAND TV NEWS, 10/8).
