A conversation with Mark Parkman, Olympic Channel GM

As we entered this sport hiatus moment one of the media outlets that immediately came to my mind was Olympic Channel, so what best than talk to the man that runs it since its beginning.

Mark Parkman has more than 30 years of experience in sports broadcasting, with nearly half of that time spent with the Olympics. The events of the past few months have presented him with a problem that many rights holders, teams, and leagues are facing together. Fortunately, the very nature of the Olympics puts his team in a familiar position — filling the content and engagement void between lengthy absences in live sports programming.

I had a long conversation with Mark from his home in Atlanta, Georgia (all employees of The Olympic Channel are working from home), and he was impressed, but not surprised, by how the company has been able to operate business as normal — or even busier than normal — without any disruption to the service. Olympic Channel’s offices are in Madrid, Spain, and most of the international staff are based there in normal times.

The Olympic Channel is aggregating content from multiple sources: Olympic Games, Olympic movement, sports federations, and others, but also creating and commissioning great original series and documentaries.
My personal favorite is the Big Wave Surfing in Nazare, “Shredding Monsters“- a must watch even for non-surfers. Have a look!

The beginning of 2020 has been very successful in terms of traffic and audience growth for the channel, starting with the live streaming of the Lausanne Youth Olympic Games (YOG), the Boxing Olympic qualifying around the globe, and the launch of the new Tokyo 2020 website (with deltatre).

As the pandemic grew, the IOC decided to delay the games to 2021, so Mark and his team had to reschedule its content programming schedule from top to bottom.

“Fortunately over the last four or five years, we’ve created a catalog of 1000 episodes from 70+ different series of original programming that we’ve been able to utilize, republish, and re-promote. A lot of it evergreen content that we can continue to deliver to fans.”

Parkman outlines the major strategy that his team is employing for the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympic Games, which had been slated to begin on July 24, 2020, but have since been postponed until July 23, 2021:

• User-Generated Content from Olympians — How athletes stay strong and active while staying at home — including a live workout with Tongan Olympian, and viral sensation from Rio and Pyeongchang, Pita Taufatifua
• Reintroducing evergreen content — like the repurposed rebroadcast of the 1992 Dream Team “Revisited” game against Germany that partnered influencer Rob Perez (@WorldWideWob on Twitter to his 541k followers) with Olympic Channel’s own Tom Kirkland (@tksportstweets) — made possible by tech partner KISWE which allows for remote, real-time commentary to be added to broadcasts. This game can be streamed at any time on OlympicChannel.com
• Finalizing some feature-length documentaries that have been produced by Five Ring Films — the Olympics Production House that has brought us sports docs titles lie The Golden Generation about the Argentina Men’s Basketball team that won gold in 2004
• Preparing for the “One Year to Go” campaign — that will give fans a taste of the games on the date that the 2020 Olympics were supposed to start while focusing on the build-up to the new 2021 date.

Parkman also mentioned how the strength of the Olympic brand is growing because of several “win-win” deals. For instance, full access to the 24/7 Olympic linear channel has been given to Sky Sports New Zealand and Sport Max in the Caribbean, which will help networks fill programming while expanding the reach of the Olympic Channel.

“It will take a while, but live sport will come back very strong…People are hungry for live sports, and ultimately sport is what unites us,” said Parkman.

Let’s talk again soon and prepare for great Tokyo 2020 games together.