Adobe Brings the Olympics to the Web

Adobe will make available some of its high-end technologies, such as Flash and Flex, to offer a full Internet coverage of the Olympics in China and Macau. The company has partnered with CCTV.com, the enterprise that has the online video rights to the Beijing Olympic Games. While the Chinese company will allow users to see the games on traditional TV sets, with help from Adobe, people will also be able to watch their favorite sports on the CCTV website.

The agreement will transform the online location into a place with the characteristics of a social network, because Adobe wants to offer users the possibility of both watching and commenting on the most interesting moments of the competition. Adobe Flex, one of the technologies that come together with Flash, will bring other features as well, such as the results of the competitions, national statistics, or comparisons between results in different sessions of the Olympics, rules explanations and professional comments.

People who choose to watch the Olympics on the Internet rather than on TV will have access to other 3,800 hours provided by international broadcasting companies that entered into the agreement, besides to the 1,200 hours of on-demand video offered by CCTV. The live streaming will be doubled by the possibility of users to watch reruns, highlights, interviews with athletes or sports specialists.

"By teaming up with Adobe, we can provide sports fans and consumers an engaging online experience for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games and beyond. We chose to partner with Adobe because Adobe technologies enable us to deliver a compelling Web 2.0 experience consistently to people across platforms." said Wang Wenbin, general manager for CCTV.com. The two companies also underscored that the Olympics coverage was only one part of the whole, as they would continue their joint initiative towards developing new media applications.

Jim Guerard, vice president and general manager of Dynamic Media for Adobe, said that the Olympics were no longer suitable for old-fashioned TV coverage, and that the agreement "[would] bring the drama and excitement of the games to the Web."