Eurosport to Offer Live VR Olympic Winter Games Coverage

For the first time ever, Discovery Communications’ Eurosport is gearing up to present live virtual-reality coverage of this year’s Olympic Winter Games throughout Europe.

The Winter Olympics Eurosport VR app will showcase more than 50 hours of live coverage capturing the action in PyeongChang across alpine skiing, curling, figure skating, ice hockey, short track, ski jumping, skeleton and snowboarding, as well as the Opening and Closing Ceremonies. Eurosport will also share full on-demand replays and daily highlights packages in VR. The coverage is provided to Eurosport by the Olympic Broadcasting Services.

The app will become available for iOS and Android phones on February 1. It will also be downloadable on Samsung Gear VR, Google Daydream and Windows Mixed Reality headsets. Users will be able to customize their viewing experience, choosing their preferred viewing point from up to six camera positions. The VR experience is being delivered by Intel True VR.

Ralph Rivera, the managing director of Eurosport Digital, stated: “Discovery has set out to transform the Olympic Winter Games viewing experience, so being able to offer viewers across Europe every minute of the Games and now every angle of some of the biggest events in live VR goes a long way to delivering this promise. We want to do this to engage more people, on more screens, with the Games than ever before, offering something new to attract younger audiences. In this way, we hope to make fans care even more about the sports they are passionate about.”