Connections

VR Among Olympics-Related Media Options

Virtual reality (VR) apps, an online video series from Comcast’s NBC Universal and Fandango in which Olympics athletes talk about the movies that have inspired them, and an online video series featuring Olympians and YouTube personality Flula Borg are just a few of the case study examples of Olympics-themed content that have been curated by Berlin-based research and consulting company Vast Media.

“Vive Rio: Heroinas” is a VR app from Spanish pubcaster RTVE Lab and Madrid communications company inMediaStudio that launched July 20. It provides viewers with a 360-degree peak at how some of Spain’s top female athletes train for the Olympics. It’s available for Android and iOS mobile devices, as well as HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR headsets. There is also a dedicated website. Included in the five 3- to 4-minute VR segments are Spain’s rhythmic gymnastics team, synchronized swimmers Ona Carbonell and Gemma Mengual, canoeist Maialen Chourraut, women’s rugby sevens team, and equestrian Beatriz Ferrer-Salat.

RTVE Lab and inMediaStudio weren’t the only international broadcaster to take a 360-degree, virtual reality take on the Olympics: the BBC launched its “BBC Sport 360” service early on, offering on-demand, VR, 360-degree coverage of selected Olympic events, via dedicated apps for the Samsung Gear VR and iOS and Android devices.

BBC promised approximately 100 hours of live Olympic coverage in VR, with as many as four camera angles, and daily, 360-degree highlights of events, including boxing, gymnastics, fencing, diving, and more.

The first three episodes of the online video series “I Love Movies” were made available on Fandango.com and the Fandango Movieclips YouTube channel May 25. In the first episode, swimmer Matt Grevers talks about his love of the Oscar-winning movie “Gladiator.” In the second, swimmer Missy Franklin discusses how the soccer-themed movie “Bend It Like Beckham” taught her gratitude and girl power. In the third, swimmer Ryan Lochte talks about how the 1998 crime-drama “Belly” made him feel unstoppable.

The Flula video series, produced by him and YouTube for NBC, is part of NBC’s multi-faceted social and digital campaign designed to draw millennials, who don’t typically watch traditional, linear TV, to the Olympics. The series features athletes including Michael Phelps, Maya Moore, Missy Franklin and Clarissa Shields. The first episode, “Flula Makes Hot Jam w/ Michael Phelps & Olympians,” was released July 19 on Flula’s YouTube channel. In the NBC-branded video, Flula asks the athletes to make sounds with sports-related objects or their mouths as part of his comic jam concept. In other episodes, Flula competes against athletes in new, wacky sports that he invented. The first video generated almost 60,000 views on YouTube, while the ones that followed each attracted about 30,000 views each.

There’s also an eight-part video series called “Dare to Believe” that tells the stories of seven British participants in next month’s Summer Paralympics for athletes with disabilities, which – like this month’s Summer Olympics – will be held in Rio de Janeiro. Channel 4 launched that series July 11 and it was produced by Boomerang and commissioned in partnership with Allianz Insurance. It’s the first ad-funded original series to receive linear broadcasting from Channel 4. All episodes are also available on Channel 4’s video on demand (VoD) platform All 4.

The non-linear Olympics-themed content is, of course, in addition to the many hours of linear TV programming around the games that will air on NBC and other TV networks. In all, there are 6,755 hours of Olympics programming slated to air on the TV networks and digital platforms of NBCUniversal, including 83 hours of 4K Ultra High-Def (UHD) content, it said.

VAST MEDIA tracks, analyzes and benchmarks digital projects and content marketing campaigns launched by broadcasters, TV producers and VOD platforms worldwide. VAST BUZZ is their comprehensive platform of TV format extensions, social TV activations, content marketing campaigns and branded originals which contains more than 4,000 case studies of Social TV initiatives, online extensions of TV shows and storytelling on digital platforms. Learn more at: www.vast-media.com.