CONI is on the innovation podium: there was special recognition for CONI (Italian National Olympic Committee), who, for once, were not bestowing a medal on one of their own champions, but rather receiving an award for Italia Team TV, the OTT (Over-The-Top Content) platform, which exclusively broadcast the Oran 2022 Mediterranean Games. The success achieved in broadcasting the Algerian event and the quality of the project were recognised yesterday at SMAU Milano, the leading Italian fair for I.T. and communication technologies.
CONI and Italia Team TV were awarded the 2022 SMAU Innovation Award, accepted by the Head of the CONI Communication Office, Danilo di Tommaso. “CONI has sports broadcasting in its DNA, which today also involves innovation”, explained Di Tommaso. “In sport there is effort, sweat and passion, but technology plays an increasingly important role”. The technology developed thanks to the collaboration with the innovative startup Nexting – already a CONI partner – has been fundamental, with the company providing their technological and OTT expertise. Italia Team TV – which can be accessed at the link https://tv.italiateam.sport/ – was created to share and promote the passion and performance of athletes from many sporting disciplines, whilst concurrently helping to supply federations with audiovisual content.
The decisive step forward came just this year: indeed, until 2021 the platform – developed jointly between the Communication Office and the CONI Marketing Department – had broadcast Italian athletes only pre and post-race, for instance during Tokyo 2020, when it screened content produced directly by Casa Italia, the hospitality house and increasingly CONI’s media factory at the Olympic Games.
In the summer of 2022, the Committee decided to air its live OTT broadcasting, on occasion of the Oran Mediterranean Games, seizing the opportunity, just days prior to the start of the event, to acquire the TV rights to broadcast the games in Italy that had not yet been acquired by traditional channels. The Games were thus broadcast from the opening ceremony onwards on two dedicated channels. It proved a success: for the first time, fans were able to follow an international multidisciplinary event live on the CONI website, which was broadcast live directly from the Algerian television-produced stream, making it visible for all the Federations.
Following the Mediterranean Games, the Italia Team TV schedule was enhanced with live broadcasts of the 2022 EYOF (European Youth Olympic Festival) held in July in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia, and then with the Trofeo CONI 2022, Italy’s top multidisciplinary event dedicated to Under-14s hosted in Valdichiana Senese in late September.
But it does not end there. With the technical commentary of Ilaria Colombo and Andrea Massaro, Italia Team TV is set to broadcast competitions 2 of the all around (Friday 14 and Saturday 15 October) and on Sunday 16 the apparatus finals of the Italian Artistic Gymnastics Championships being held in Naples.