We’ve been harping on NBC Universal’s coverage of the Beijing 2008 Olympics, so it seems fair to look forward to the 2012 Olympics in London.
First, Cisco has become an official Olympic sponsor, replacing Nortel, which has filed for bankruptcy.
Interestingly enough, though there’s certainly a lot of infrastructure associated with organizing the games – the needs of multiple events and multiple athletes, in multiple languages, when you’re talking about the main challenge that the Olympics produces for telecommunications networks – it’s gotta be video.
Video seems to be at the core of Cisco’s strategy; everything from teleconferencing to those little Flip cameras is part of Cisco’s purview. Sponsoring the Olympics is a great test – but let’s also not forget the ambitions of Cisco in sports. The Cowboys Stadiumhas nearly 3,000 flat screen TVs connected via IP enabled video. The TVs are from Sony, the content from DirectTV, everything else, from the head end to the digital media player, is from Cisco.
(You’ll notice that we skipped over the 2010 Olympics, but as they’re being held in Vancouver, British Columbia, getting the data into the United States will not be so nearly a daunting challenge. Besides, the Vancouver 2010 logo is just a guy made out of what looks like lego blocks. The 2012 London logo is much more interesting…)
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