The IOC announced TOP sponsor Toyota has become the second Founding Partner of the Olympic Channel, joining fellow TOP sponsor Bridgestone. As part of the four-year deal, Toyota will receive exclusive advertising opportunities and will work with the Olympic Channel to co-develop content. Toyota has been a TOP sponsor since ’15 and will work with organizing committees through ’24 to provide solutions for the Games (IOC). CABLEFAX DAILY reported the 24/7 Olympic Channel launched Sunday following the Closing Ceremony and will feature "a mix of live events, news, originals and highlights." Olympic Channel GM Mark Parkman said that the channel "will continue to evolve after launch." One innovative feature it is starting with is "a native, 360-video player." Parkman: "We have four pillars of programming. We have live events -- we already have partnerships with 27 of the 35 Olympic Federations. Some of those sports have worldwide distribution, some have little distribution, and others have targeted territorial strengths. For those that have worldwide distribution, we intend to showcase their athletes, do promotions of those events and help them spread the word. With those that have more limited distribution, we want to offer them our platform to stream their events, have their highlights/news on the Olympic Channel with the association of the 5 rings on a daily basis. Then we’ll have original content. We’re expecting to have 250 hours of original content produced each year. There’ll be series, stories, training tips, nutrition … there’s historical content, documentaries -- it’s a wide gamut" (CABLEFAX DAILY, 8/19).
