The Kick Project

pic:digitaltrends.com This year's Olympic Games covers thousands of hours of action over two weeks. It's impossible to see it all and such massive variety and the sheer breadth of content is often lost via the traditional single-channel-per-country viewing options. This model has tended to produce either a one-eyed coverage which focusses on the country for which the broadcaster holds the media rights (in cases where the country is deemed worthy of paying enough for dedicated coverage) or some generic hold-all (in countries too poor or unimportant to be able to buy dedicated rights) that generally fails to capture much of the magic. The Olympics, theoretically intended to bring the world closer together, often tends to emphasise the borders and the differences. Rio 2016 may be different. This time around, digital options are challenging the traditional TV broadcast lock-up. Numerous online channels and platforms are lining up to provide a blanket coverage of everyth...

Pic: upliftconnect.com As the Rio 2016 Olympics get closer - only 2 more sleeps!! - we at The Kick Project, like most, will be watching for all those great moments and stories. We hope that, despite all the apparent pre-Opening Ceremony dramas (just like every other Games in the last 20 years), the Games will provide the sense of connectivity and shared celebration it can deliver. While we are sports fans like anyone and we'll be watching the athletes do their thing, we are always paying attention to the human rights issues surrounding such major sporting events as this . But, there's two special aspects to this year's Games that make our viewing experience even more focussed. Both aspects refer to unique, first time ever, factors in the Games and how they are shaped. Here the first (the next will follow in another post soon) The Refugee Olympic Team We, not surprisingly, were very happy to see the IOC open up to allow refugee athletes to compete at these G...