The 2016 Olympic opening ceremonies had just started, and I thought briefly about events I wanted to see. I’m not a huge fan of the Olympics mostly because of the time commitment. However, if I happen to be in front of the TV when the events are on, depending upon the event, I’m happy to watch, and can get drawn in easily.
As the Olympics unfolded, I caught a few minutes of an event here and there, just by happening to be in front of a TV. Searching for any particular event never crossed my mind, even with the ease and power behind several powerful search engines like Bing and Google. The widgets built into search engine’s results showing Olympic standings in line with other search results was a great time saver.
However, why oh why didn’t the broadcasting network NBC create a calendar of Olympic 2016 events that can easily be imported into either Google Calendar, or Microsoft Outlook? Even Star Trek fans are able to add a calendar to their Google Calendar for Star Dates.
Olympic ratings are hurting? Any one of these organizations could have created a shared calendar for all or a subset of Olympic events. Maybe you just want a calendar that shows all the aquatic events?
Olympic Team Sponsors from soda to fast food, why oh why did you paint your consumer goods with pictures of Javelin throwers and Swimmers, but didn’t put a QR code on the side of your containers that directs consumers to your sponsored team’s calendar schedule “importable” into Google Calendar, or Microsoft Outlook?
If sponsors, or the broadcasting network, NBC, would have created these shareable calendars, you now would had entered the personal calendars of the consumer. A calendar entry pop-up may not only display what current competition is being fought, the body of the event may also contain [URL] links to stream the event live. The body of the event may also contain links to each team player’s stats, and other interesting facts relating to the event.
Also, if a Team Sponsor is the one creating the custom calendar for the Olympic Events, like USA Swimming’s sponsor Marriott , the streaming live video events may now be controlled by the Sponsor, yes, all advertising during the streaming session would be controlled by the the Sponsor. All Marriott! The links in the team sponsor calendar entries may not only have their own streaming links to the live events, but include any feature rich, relevant related content.
There is the small matter of broadcast licensing Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) and broadcaster exclusivity, but hey, everything is negotiable. Not sure traditional broadcasting rules should apply in a world of video streaming.
All the millions sponsors spend, for an IT Project that could cost a fraction of their advertising budget, and add significant ROI, it boggles the mind why every sponsor isn’t out there doing this or something similar right now. The tech is relatively inexpensive, and readily available, so why not now? If you know of any implementations, please drop me a note.
One noted exception, the “Google app” [for the iPhone] leverages alerts for all types of things such as a warning on traffic conditions for your ride home to … the start of the Women’s beam Gymnastics Olympic event. Select the alert, and opens up a ‘micro’ portal with people competing in the event, a detailed list of athlete profiles, including picture, country of origin, and metals won. There is also a tab showing the event future schedule.
