Seven West Media today announced that there will be one destination to watch every moment from the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games on all screens live and free from 23 July.
Seven will deliver its 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 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.
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.”
Experience Evolution uses a data-driven approach including the use of proprietary 7REDiQ to deliver an engaging, personalised experience to users, while driving product affinity and monetisation. Experience Evolution introduces the following features to 7plus:
• Watchlist: Provides users with the ability to add their favourite sport to an easily discoverable watchlist, allowing them to watch the event at their own convenience.
• Continue Watching: This gives signed-in users the ability to watch a sport full replay and pick up where they left off via the continue watching carousel located on their home screen.
• Captions: Live and VOD (including multilingual): To provide an accessible viewing experience for all users, it’s important to provide captioning to ensure as many users as possible can watch their favourite sports, events and highlights.
• Autoplay: The autoplay functionality provides viewers with a simple way to binge multiple event replays, highlights and sports minis without needing to lift a finger. It simply plays the next relevant piece of content.
• Chromecast and Airplay: As most people own multiple devices, including smart TVs and mobile phones, it’s becoming ever more important to provide a streaming service that supports this behaviour. The 7plus app will allow users to either Chromecast or Airplay content to their Chromecast or Airplay compatible device. This allows users to stream Tokyo 2020 on 7plus no matter the age of their television device.
• HD/SD selector: The 7plus player provides users with the ability to toggle between HD/SD to allow for the best and most data efficient streaming.
• Freeze Frame: A select, scaled range of devices have been enabled with Freeze Frame ads that appear as an overlay whenever a user pauses the content.
Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 will air 23 July to 8 August. Paralympic Games will air 24 August to 5 September. Tokyo 2020 live and free on Seven and 7plus