Olympic games: Athletes can't share videos

The Olympic Games just finished on August 8th. However, much is to do about the Olympic Games and their Olympic spirit as athletes are barred by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to post video footage of their games on social media.

What happened

Jamaican sprinter Elaine Thompson-Herah had her Instagram account suspended after posting video footage of her gold medal run. The infringement of broadcasting rights on her account was reported to Instagram, which consequently removed the footage. 

Elaine Thompson-Herah, of Jamaica, celebrates after winning the women’s 100-meter final at the 2020 Summer Olympics. Source: Yahoo.com

The IOC has told athletes after this incident that athletes are allowed to post pictures of stills, but are not allowed post video footage of their performances.

The IOC has the global broadcasting rights for its own Olympics. This includes the broad casting rights on television, radio, mobile and internet platforms.  

Due to the nature of broadcasting rights, these rights are there for each specific country. This also means that the IOC can sell the broadcasting rights per country or territory to any broadcasting organization or for any price.

How much money is involved

The broadcasting rights, apart from sponsorship opportunities, provide a big chunk of the revenue for the IOC. 

For example, the broadcasting rights for the USA are acquired by NBCU from 2021 to 2023 for avalue of USD 7.65 billion. 

The European broadcasting rights for the period 2018-2024 were acquired by Discovery for EUR 1.3 billion. 

Usually, the companies that receive the broadcasting rights are allowed to sub-license these (if they want) to other broadcasting organizations, and consequently make more money apart from just broadcasting the games themselves.  

Explanation of IOC

The IOC has published that its revenue is used for more than 90% to support the International Sports Federations, the National Olympic Committees, the Olympic Teams, and the Organizing committees of the Games.

As such, it claims the importance to value the owners of the broadcasting rights, and bars athletes from posting the videos of their Olympic performances.

Reply of Facebook

Facebook, the mother company of Instagram, replied that the illegal content was removed, but the account of Jamaican sprinter Elaine Thompson-Herah had been suspended by mistake. 

This reply shows that in special cases, accounts might not get suspended. After all we are talking about a gold medal winner. However, the statement also shows that Facebook respects the full broadcasting rights.

Broadcasting rights versus social media

It will be interesting to see how in the future the IOC and broadcasting rights organizations in various countries will deal with social media and video coverage. 

From their point of view, athletes sharing pictures of stills of the achievement is fine. However, posting videos of the achievement is not.

In a time where everyone is massively sharing their whereabouts, videos, and achievements online, we have entered into an era were most athletes want to show the video footage of their own accomplishment on social media. 

What should then prevail: the Olympic spirit or broadcasting rights?