Yiannis Exarchos, CEO of OBS and Executive Director of Olympic Channel Services, outlines the key technological innovations of this year’s edition and the strategy behind them

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The Olympic Games have long stood as one of the most powerful global sporting events, capable of uniting audiences across continents, cultures and generations. For the broadcast industry, however, they represent something more: a unique large-scale laboratory where innovation is tested under extreme conditions, often years before new technologies become mainstream across the wider media ecosystem.

This role has become even more pronounced since the creation of Olympic Broadcast Services (OBS), which replaced the traditional host broadcaster model after the Sydney 2000 Games. The shift marked a fundamental change in how Olympic broadcasting is conceived and delivered. Rather than reinventing production and technology every four years, the Olympic movement gained a permanent host broadcaster with a long-term technological roadmap, able to evolve across multiple editions of the Games.

“We are not tech narcissists”

Despite the sheer scale of innovation involved, and the fact that OBS is a highly technological organisation, technology itself is never the starting point. “We should never forget, and I constantly remind both my team and myself, that this is not about technology. This is about telling the stories of the most important athletes in the world, and about conveying the values and emotions generated by their performances,” said Yiannis Exarchos, CEO of OBS and Executive Director of Olympic Channel Services, during a media roundtable attended by TM BROADCAST.

That philosophy underpins everything OBS does. “Technology, and especially emerging technologies, is a huge enabler of that, but the Olympic Games are not about showcasing technology for its own sake. We are not tech narcissists”.

Instead, OBS frames its use of technology around what Yiannis Exarchos calls the “three Es”: enablement, engagement and efficiency. “Enablement means being able to do things that were simply not possible in the past. Engagement is about making the storytelling and coverage of the Games more exciting and more compelling. And efficiency is about making the Games more sustainable, easier to operate, and less wasteful”.

When it comes to formats, Exarchos pointed out that, with the exception of 8K, which will be reserved for the opening ceremony and a small number of selected events, virtually every existing format is supported. The native production format will be 4K HDR, from which all other versions can be derived.

From a logistical standpoint, geographical distribution remains the main challenge. “Some mountain venues initially lacked sufficient connectivity”

Opening ceremony: a major challenge

The first element to highlight is the opening ceremony, which, as Yiannis Exarchos pointed out, “is, in itself, the result of innovation.” The geographical dispersion of the Games across northern Italy has fundamentally shaped its conception. “Moving from one venue to another is not always easy, and it was therefore essential to ensure that athletes, organisers, the organising committee and the IOC all had the opportunity to feel part of the opening ceremony.”

This ambition is made possible by the technological backbone of the event, and particularly by the connectivity established between venues. “The opening ceremony will take place simultaneously across four locations, actually five if we include Milan itself. We see this as a clear example of how technology can create excitement and a genuine sense of participation, not just allowing people to watch, but to truly feel involved.”

From a logistical standpoint, geographical distribution remains the main challenge. “Some mountain venues initially lacked sufficient connectivity, but Telecom Italia has been instrumental in addressing that.” While the split of Alpine events across two geographically distant areas is not a major issue for OBS, it does introduce complexities for rights-holding broadcasters. “Broadcasters traditionally operate Alpine sports from a single hub,” Exarchos noted.

Some other examples of innovation

Some innovations will be immediately visible on screen. One of the most striking examples is the extensive use of first-person-view drones. “Drones are not new in sports broadcasting, OBS first used them back in 2014,” Exarchos noted, “but we are now working with a new generation of technology that allows for extremely safe operations, flying very close to the action and offering viewers a sense of being part of the competition.” The result, he said, is a fundamentally different viewing experience. “Across many sports, audiences will see images that simply did not exist before.”

Another major step forward builds on the rapid development of artificial intelligence. After the introduction of 360-degree replays in Paris, Milano-Cortina will go further by combining those movements with stroboscopic effects and data overlays. “This creates a more complete narrative,” Exarchos explained. “It explains the sport more clearly, makes it easier to understand, and highlights the athletes’ efforts even more effectively.”

The third example relates to curling, a sport that has traditionally been difficult for casual viewers to fully grasp. Here, technology becomes a tool for education as much as for entertainment. “For many years, we have been trying to find a way to help viewers truly understand what is happening in curling. There is often a perception that it is simply a stone gliding across the ice, when in reality it is an extremely technical sport,” he said.

In this case, artificial intelligence becomes a key tool. “Thanks to AI, we can now visualise data in real time alongside the competition. Viewers will see not only the position of the stone, but also its rotation, as well as the sweeping frequency of the team members. This allows audiences to better appreciate the technique and complexity involved.”

After the introduction of 360-degree replays in Paris, Milano-Cortina will go further by combining those movements with stroboscopic effects and data overlays

Beyond linear television

Innovation is not driven solely by technology, but also by the scale and diversity of the Olympic audience. “The Olympic Games represent the biggest opportunity for many sports to reach a truly global audience, often dozens or even hundreds of times larger than in other competitions,” Exarchos pointed out. “That reality places enormous responsibility on the host broadcaster. We therefore need to make these sports understandable quickly and intuitively for a general audience.”

The challenge extends beyond linear television. Olympics.com became the most visited digital sports platform in the world during the Paris Olympic Games. The platform, together with the Olympic Channel, serves as a global destination offering original programming, news, live sports events and highlights, providing year-round engagement with fans worldwide.

Virtual OB vans

While many innovations capture attention on screen, some of the most significant transformations happen behind the scenes. Efficiency has become a central pillar of OBS’s strategy, driven by the need to manage ever-growing scale while reducing environmental impact. In this context, virtual OB vans have played a key role.

“This is a major engineering breakthrough that allows us to move away from traditional large outside broadcast trucks. In many venues, we will use alternative production models based on IP technologies, as part of our full transition towards IP-based workflows. The result is significant savings: we will use roughly half the compound space, consume far less electricity, and reduce installation times considerably.”

 “Traditional TV remains extremely important, but consumption habits have evolved, and today content is consumed across many different platforms, each with its own requirements”

An increasingly smaller IBC… yet essential

The impact is measurable. The International Broadcast Centre (IBC) for Milano-Cortina will be around 25% smaller than the IBC in Beijing, with power consumption reduced by 33%. “Looking further ahead, for Los Angeles we are planning an IBC that will be essentially half the size of the one in Rio, while producing more than twice the amount of content.”

Does this trajectory suggest that the IBC could eventually disappear as cloud-based production continues to expand? Exarchos was cautious. “If we want to be realistic, I do not think we can currently predict a future in which the IBC disappears completely and everything becomes fully remote or virtualised. We need to recognise the physical realities of the Olympic Games.”

Those realities are closely tied to the human dimension of the event. “In Milano-Cortina alone, we will have around 6,000 broadcasters on site,” he explained. “The reason is simple: many of them want and need to be close to their athletes, and that is entirely legitimate. What we want to avoid is forcing people to travel to do work that could just as well be done from the other side of the world.”

For Exarchos, the IBC remains an essential part of the Olympic experience. “The complete disappearance of the IBC or studios in the host city is neither realistic nor desirable. It is part of the beauty of the Games.”

This is why remote production is conceived as an enabler rather than a replacement. In Milano-Cortina, cloud-based workflows will reach an unprecedented level of adoption. “65% of signals will be transmitted via the cloud. When we first started working with Alibaba, we anticipated that adoption would reach around 25% by Milan. Instead, we are already at 65%. This is partly because broadcasters clearly see the benefits, and partly because the pandemic accelerated the adoption of new workflows.”

Cloud-based master control and remote production workflows are all part of this shift. “This allows for large-scale signal distribution and content delivery. In Milano-Cortina, we will produce more than 6,000 hours of content, and this infrastructure enables broadcasters to receive that content directly at their home base”.

As familiarity with these workflows increases, OBS is also expanding what broadcasters can do remotely. “We provide them with the tools to receive signals anywhere in the world and to perform operations that, in some cases, they are not even able to do yet within their own facilities.”

Yet the scale of the IBC remains extraordinary. One figure illustrates its continued relevance. “In Milan, the connectivity leaving the IBC during the Games will represent around 70% of the total internet capacity of the entire city of Milan. From a single building, we will generate traffic equivalent to most of the city’s normal usage. That capacity would allow you to download a full 4K feature film in half a second.”

“In many venues, we will use alternative production models based on IP technologies, as part of our full transition towards IP-based workflows”

Automated AI-driven highlights

Automated, AI-driven highlight generation will also play a key role. “This is particularly valuable for an event of the scale of the Olympic Games, as it allows each broadcaster to customise highlights by country, sport, athlete, duration, and even advertising integration.”

The impact of this approach is already evident. “In Paris alone, this system generated around 100,000 different short-form highlight clips,” he recalled. “Anyone in the industry understands what that would have required in terms of human effort.”

Milano-Cortina will mark another milestone. “We will deploy this technology for the first time at the Winter Games. It is also the same technology underpinning the IOC initiative that allows Olympic athletes to access highlights of their own performances, a major breakthrough that we have already begun delivering at scale.”

The scale of this transformation becomes even clearer when looking at overall content volumes. Of the 6,000 hours of content generated at the Winter Games, the competitions themselves account for roughly 1,000 hours. “The additional volume is driven by the need to deliver a wide diversity of content formats,” he explained. “Traditional television remains extremely important, but consumption habits have evolved, and today content is consumed across many different platforms, each with its own requirements.”

This shift has profound implications for broadcasters. “We therefore need to enable broadcasters to use short-form content, behind-the-scenes material, virtual reality experiences and other formats across multiple platforms. This explains both the scale of production and why it would simply not be possible without the support of technology,” concluded.

OBS will introduce Olympic GPT, an AI-powered assistant designed to answer fans’ questions about the Games using verified Olympic data

Olympic film produced in-house

Another milestone for Milano-Cortina is that, for the first time, the IOC will produce the official Olympic film in-house. The project will be led by Olympic Channel Services and will adopt a distinctly cinematic approach to the Games.

“We felt it would be a missed opportunity for Italy, one of the great pillars of film history, not to have an official Olympic film”, Yiannis Exarchos explained. “We are therefore very proud to be working with Chiara Messineo, a renowned Italian documentary filmmaker who has collaborated with major platforms such as Netflix and CNN, and who also worked on the Stanley Tucci series.”

“Together, we are producing a film that will offer a compelling and intimate look at the Games, seen through the eyes of both the athletes and the people who make the Games happen.”

Olympic GPT

For Milano-Cortina, OBS will introduce Olympic GPT, an AI-powered assistant designed to answer fans’ questions about the Games using verified Olympic data. “What makes it special is that it does not rely on random sourcing from the internet, which often contains inaccuracies or biased information. Instead, it is designed to deliver accurate, verified and unbiased Olympic-related information.”

“We are very excited about this development. Testing has shown that the system can handle very high levels of traffic, and while no AI system is ever perfect, the performance so far has been extremely strong. It is a first step, and we will see how it evolves, but we believe it offers real value.”

For the first time, the IOC will produce the official Olympic film in-house. The project will be led by Olympic Channel Services and will adopt a distinctly cinematic approach to the Games

Milano-Cortina 2026 Olympic Games: Key figures

• The IBC will be around 25% smaller than the IBC in Beijing
• Power consumption will be reduced by 33%
• Around 6,000 broadcasters will be on site
• 65% of signals will be transmitted via the cloud
• More than 6,000 hours of content will be produced, with the competitions themselves accounting for roughly 1,000 hours