Athletics Coverage on TV Needs to Innovate and Evolve

Published by Athletics Weekly on December 17, 2016

Apart from having to stay up until the early hours, there was much to celebrate and little to complain about when it came to the televised coverage of athletics in Rio last summer.

All the drama, including Mo Farah’s epic gold medal-winning performances, was brilliantly captured using the Olympic host broadcaster’s state-of-the-art core coverage. There were more than enough camera angles to show almost every nuance and incident, plus the BBC had some of its own cameras to add a unique British slant on events.

We can expect more compelling action to the same high standard next summer at London 2017. When the world’s broadcasters gathered last month for a pre-production meeting, they would have had few fears about the core athletics coverage. It was principally the logistics they focused on.