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Seven lights torch with 100 Days until Olympics

2 HD channels & 43 streaming channels across Seven / 7Plus for a rescheduled Tokyo 2020.

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With just 100 days from the Olympics in Tokyo, Seven West Media has announced coverage across 2 x HD Channels, and 43 streaming channels -available in multiple languages.

Tokyo 2020, delayed by one year due to the pandemic, comes with just a 1 hour time difference to AEST meaning events will be seen from Sunrise to evening.

Johnna Griggs &  Luke Darcy anchor Mornings coverage with Hamish McLachlan & Abbey Gelmi in primetime (expected to be from Melbourne studio). Mel McLaughlin, Mark Beretta, Jason Richardson and Nathan Templeton will be in Tokyo. Late nights will be Tokyo Shinya co-hosted by Andy Maher & Lisa Sthalekar.

Amongst the commentators are  Bruce McAvaney, Giaan Rooney Anna Meares, Andrew Gaze, Tamsyn Manou, Russell Mark, Nick Green, Candice Warner, Greg Clark & Kerri Pottharst.

Seven News & Sunrise are the only Australian cameras allowed in venues and with permanent cameras inside the Olympic Village. There will also be live sites around Australia including at live sites at Circular Quay, Federation Square, Southbank in Brisbane, plus Perth & Adelaide.

7Plus will offer advertisers 8m registered users, and Seven is conducting a Favourite Ad competition for clients with a viewer to win a 5 star Aussie holiday.

4 million tickets have been sold to Japanese public although it isn’t yet clear how many will be admitted into Olympic venues.

Seven’s Chief Digital Officer, Gereurd Roberts, said: “With Seven having the exclusive rights to Tokyo 2020, we’ve been able to deliver not only the world’s biggest sporting event, but the biggest digital event in Australian history. We are predicting more than eight million registered users will flood the platform, delivering an incredible wealth of data across name, age, gender, postcode and more to offer our advertising partners.

“But it’s not just the scale of our digital offering that’s made Tokyo 2020 so exciting. We’ve entirely evolved the 7plus platform, in a program we call Experience Evolution, using the Games as a springboard to deliver a market-leading digital experience for the rest of our programming across the year and beyond. All the features built for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 will also be used in business-as-usual VOD and Live experiences, setting the bar for BVOD streaming in Australia.”

Following the Games Seven will launch The Voice, Australia’s Got Talent, SAS Australia and Big Brother VIP -plus finals for AFL and the Spring Carnival Racing.

Seven will also screen the Paralympics and in February 2022 the Winter Olympics leading into the return of Australian Idol.

For the first time in Australian Olympics history, there will be one destination to watch every medal, every record and every inspiring moment from the Games. Seven will deliver its exclusive experience across 43 channels and two simulcasts, including 36 channels curated by Seven, six pre-created channels direct from Tokyo and one existing Olympic channel. Together this provides the most live streams ever hosted by an Australian broadcaster.

Extending across Seven’s entire digital ecosystem including 7plus, 7NEWS. com.au and The West Australian, over one billion minutes will be streamed across the 17-day period, with four modes of viewing: live, full replay, Olympic minis (compressed replays) and short form highlights. The broadcast will feature a consistent experience across 20 different platforms allowing Australians to stream across any device of their choosing, and live EPG integration to ensure they never miss a moment.

Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 23 July-8 August on Seven.
Paralympic Games 24 August-5 September

27 Responses

  1. It is insanity that this event is going ahead. The Australian Open was just lucky it scarped through without a major hitch (though the city went into a mini lockdown mid-tournament). The Olympics are a much larger event with people coming from every corner of the globe. What happens if a world record holder tests positive mid-games? Do they just run a medal event without the favourite?

    1. Given how bad things are now there and not to mention the inordinate amount of money they spent ,$20 plus billion ,its obscene for 2 bloody weeks of sport ,there are alot of conditions and regulations but it’ll be difficult to police everyone there. Perhaps future Olympic cities can look at this for what it is ,an absolute waste of money.

  2. Any word on whether switching channels online will incur another pre-roll ad each time? Even paying premium subscribers were subjected to this last time.

  3. This is absolute madness that these are planning on going ahead.
    People around the world are still dying every second from this insidious disease.
    The Games should be cancelled

    1. Well they’re just said there is still a chance they could be cancelled , more outbreaks and a very slow rollout of the vaccine ,it’s on a knife edge I think.

  5. Woooow! 2 HD channels?! The future is here, people!

    Meanwhile, Japan skips even regular UHD and gets a whopping 8K UHD broadcast for the games. That’s 16x greater resolution than 1920×1080.

    1. That’s impressive but i think overkill ,not that many have 8K television sets so only those who do will get the full benefit ,still I’d be a happy camper with 4K UHD but that ain’t gunna happen.

      1. Not only that, but most people don’t have TVs large enough to justify such large resolutions in the first place. I thought our HD TVs were too small back in the day, and the UHD TVs we have now are ludicrously undersized. A lot of “4K” content is upscaled from lower resolution sources anyway, which leaves me scratching my head as to why we’re in such a rush for higher and higher resolutions when content creators (and the associated costs) can’t catch up.

        I pretty much do all my filming in either UHD or true Cinema 4K now for future-proofing. It’s just a shame that blank Blu-rays are easy (and cheap) enough to come by online, but blank UHD discs and authoring software are not yet available (and perhaps may never be).

  8. Seven had 3 full time feeds during Rio 2016 (which had a far worse time zone), 7, 7Two and 7mate (with 7flix running normal programming).

    So it looks like this time they’ve dropped one of either 7Two or 7mate. The one that’s not full time however will probably be used for the 7 feed during Seven News (6pm) though, as Nine do with 9Go! during Nine News during the tennis.

    Wonder why though? Costs/budget cuts? Try to push viewers to 7Plus?

      1. The quote from Roberts doesn’t specify whether this “experience evolution” of 7plus has already happened or is still yet to come – but I’d hope it’s the latter, because as of now, 7plus is streaming at the lowest resolution of any of the free-to-air services, at a measly 504p (not even SD).

        ABC iView, 9now and SBS On Demand all do 720p by default now, leaving only 7plus and 10play lagging behind.

        7plus did experiment with 1080p briefly (the first episode of “Hard Sun” was 1080p when that show launched) but they later “fixed” it 😉

        1. I can’t see why they can’t follow suit and go a minimum 720P , progressive is the better way to watch sports as it looks better than interlaced ,they really are behind the 7 network.

  11. This is so awesome! Like i’m seriously looking forward to them. The thing i love is this time around its all free. At least that is what it reads as anyways. I do know its covid but you know the Olympics is escapism. Lets hope they all go off without a hitch.

  12. This is fantastic news, thanks for all the details on this one. No matter what, the Olympics gives everyone such a moment of national pride. Although it will be different to others, I’m can’t wait to see it.

  15. I know that there will be zero overseas spectators for the TOkyo games. For like many events including swimming, athletics, triathlon, tennis, rugby will they use like fake crowd noises (similar to the AFL & NRL from last year?)

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