IOC moves quickly to shape Olympic Virtual Series

(ATR) The IOC is counting on the newly announced Virtual Series to increase youth engagement with the Olympics.

The five-sport event announced just days ago will feature global competitions in baseball, cycling, rowing, sailing and motor sport. The virtual event will run from May 13 to June 23, the date annually marked as Olympic Day.

"This is an opportunity for us to grow the engagement of people outside the 17 days of the Olympic Games," says Christopher Carroll, IOC Director of Director of Digital Engagement and Marketing, in a virtual briefing for media from Olympic House in Lausanne.

IOC Sports Director Kit McConnell says the lineup for this inaugural venture is set just for 2021. Since the series was announced, McConnell says he’s heard from other federations which want to be considered for the future.

McConnell says each event will be hosted via the platform of the game publisher. But a common look to branding will be shared among the five sports. And the Olympic Channel will serve as a central source of news and results while the gaming is underway.

McConnell says the particulars of each sport should be revealed in the next week by the publishers involved with the Virtual Series.

The five sports are the first to emerge from the IOC Esports and Gaming Liaison Group led by David Lappartient, president of international cycling federation UCI. Lappartient and his group has been working for the past two years on how to bring Esports into the Olympic pantheon. The drive for Esports in the Olympics has been given more impetus with the adoption of Olympic Agenda 2020 Plus 5, the list of objectives declared by IOC President Thomas Bach for the final four years of his mandate.

McConnell says that the five sports selected were chosen in part for the level of sophistication and development in their virtual product. Not all federations are atthe same level he notes, but says that the creation of the Olympic Virtual Series will likely make other sports increase their attention to the virtual world. But McConnell says it is not the intent of the IOC to include a virtual version of each sport on the program.

"It’s not as simple as saying if you have a game you’re part of the series," he says.

"What does this look like for next year and beyond? We need to see how this year goes," says McConnell. He says the period between 2022 and 2024 will be crucial for developing the next edition, especially with Paris 2024 emphasizing digital engagement.

For the Winter Olympics, there are no plans to bring virtual sports to Beijing in 2022. But McConnell says the experience of this first tournament could push the development of Esports in the Winter Games.

While the recognition of Esports for their competitive values is a recent development of the IOC, for more than 20 years the IOC has licensed six different versions of Super Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, including Tokyo.

"We don’t have existing competition structures around those games," says McConnell. "We do have existing competition structures around the five games selected for the Virtual Series," he says to explain the exclusion of Mario and Sonic.

"We’re in the start of a journey," says Carroll about the future of the IOC’s digital ventures. Over the next year he’ll be overseeing the consolidation of the digital assets of the IOC which will influence the shape of future versions of the Olympic Virtual Series as well as Mario and Sonic.

"We have a rough idea of where we are going, but in this fast changing world we also need agility, to adapt. Increasingly our job is to grow the relevancy of the Olympics through outreach to different communities. The Marios are one community. The virtual series is another community. We want to make sure the Olympic Virtual Series does a proper outreach to this community," says Carroll.

Reported by Ed Hula.