New Media and the Olympic Movement: Websites

New Media and the Olympic Movement: Websites

With a basic website a requirement for any organization to engage with the public, the Olympic Family has joined the rush to take their news online, with organizing committees leading the way. But sports federations and organizers of world championships and multi-sport events are also plunging into the internet as well.

From the inception of a city’s bid for the Games the launch of a website has become as much a part of a city's PR blitz as a logo or slogan.

When Doha 2016 launched its new logo with an October celebration, a revamped website, was also part of the promotion. Bid cities now use their websites to introduce bid team members and display favorable media coverage. FIFA offers its website in four languages and has customized home pages for most countries. (Getty Images)

World championship organizing committees from Baku to Osaka make elaborate web pages with news updates, photos and schedules, as do organizers of non-Olympic games such as the World University Games.

All of the 36 international federations that appear in the Summer and Winter Games have websites. Of those sites,FIFA appears to offer the richest package of content: news, standings, videos, biographies and more.

But even federations for sports with smaller followings, such as the International Fencing Federation, manage to use their sites for online standings, tournament results, technical manuals, news and multimedia content. Some do it in multiple languages.

But of 205 national Olympic committees, just over half have an official website with a link from Olympic.org. Four of five continental associations have well-developed websites. Noticeably absent from that group is the Pan American Sports Organization, a surprise given the association includes web savvy nations such as the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Brazil.

It is the Olympic organizing committees which are on the vanguard of web site usage.

London 2012, aiming to capture new interest in the Olympics from young people, already has a lofty online vision.

“New media channels (including web and mobile) are an integral part of the project as a whole and will have a significant role in the way we communicate with not only the public, but also our staff and the wider Olympic and Paralympic families,” a London 2012 spokesman tells Around the Rings.

“Our aim is to make our new media channels the number one way to access, share and participate in the Games,” he adds. "As the week ends, I am back in London – but most of the last week I have spent in China," Olympic minister Tessa Jowell wrote in her Nov. 15 blog on London 2012. (Getty Images)

The site already includes blogs and an RSS news feed.

The blog recruits LOCOG staff and invites guests to write informal mini-articles. Even the big wigs. Secretary of State for sport James Purnell and Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell are among the people posting thoughts on the London site.

When London released its logo earlier this year, the website was readied to provide a way for people to react to the design.

"We anticipated that there would be a strong online reaction and we built an upload tool on the website so that the public could create something based on the patterns of the logo and send it to us," the spokesman says.

Beijing, meanwhile, is making sure basic operations run smoothly.

Organizers say their main tasks are hiring staff, developing the system that will show Games results and lining up the bandwidth they will need for Games-time traffic says Jin Hang, the BOCOG website manager from Sohu.com.

Beijing 2008 has suffered the result of underestimating the massive internet traffic the Games will generate. When Games tickets went up for sale to the Chinese public on a first-come, first-served basis in October, eight million website hits in the first hour crashed a site designed for only one million users.

Beijing's website is rich in multimedia content. Jin points out Beijing's is the first Olympic website to use geographic information systems to present an interactive, customizable city map.

In the months until the Games start, Jin and the website team are working on Spanish and Arabic-language versions of the site – topping other OCOG sites that had a maximum three languages.

The Games-time site may look and feel different, says Jin, as the content switches to competition news, schedules and results.

"I believe the official website will be the most visited site during the Olympic Games," says Jin.

Vancouver is in its final stages to the 2010 Games and will shift the direction of its website. Vancouver reported a spike in web traffic to one million page views in the month after the announcement of the Games ticket sales scheme in October 2007.

Graeme Menzies, director of online communications and editorial services at Vancouver 2010, calls this next online evolution the "engagement phase".

"Starting next year, Vancouver2010.com will shift focus from coverage of Games planning and management to topics and features that engage fans and enthusiasts in the Games experience," he says.

Vancouver is already running one "simple and successful" program to engage Canadian fans: the Countdown to the Games call for photos.

"Since launching that feature in June of 2006, and without any promotion, we have received more than 2,000 submissions, from every region in Canada," says Menzies.

Each day the website features a new photo with a tag indicating the number of days left until the Games. Vancouver will run more promotions asking for Canadians' stories, thoughts and content, according to Menzies.

As part of the mascot launch on Nov. 27, VANOC also will launch a microsite for young people that will feature games and videos.

A team of three is responsible for managing the Vancouver site – in partnership with translators, editorial specialists and other technology staff. The team will grow in 2008.

While a website is an adequate way to reach the public, the next step is special content available on demand or to subscribers.

Written by Laura Grundy, with reporting by Bryant Armstrong, Ed Hula III and Maggie Lee.

For general comments or questions, click here