RIO2016 – Hungarians have to stay up all night because of the Americans

MNO.hu reports the latest news about the Olympic broadcasts: the American NBC is paying an insanely lot of money for the broadcast rights, therefore, the programme schedule rather depends on the American market. Which means that the people of Europe, including Hungary, have to carry out some changes in their lifestyles in order to be able to watch the events of the 2016 Olympic Games live.

As usual, people, especially the great fans of sports go quite crazy about the Olympic Games, understandably, of course. Sometimes they have to get up really early or stay up all night to root for their fellow patriots. This time, it seems that the favour is on the night owls, for several Hungarian-related sports’ events and finals will be broadcasted before daybreak in Hungary.

Furthermore, the broadcasting programmes are overwhelmingly scheduled according to the routines and needs of the certain continent’s people, but for a while now the competitions’ schedule is decided by the program schedule of the NBC. You may wonder why and how come that one channel can have such a huge impact, well, it is because huge crowds of people are moved by sporting events in the USA, populated by nearly 320 million.

They get really excited and interested, and follow the events both live and in front of the telly; for instance, when Hungary’s water polo team played against the Americans back at the 2008 Olympics, an unprecedented number of people in America watched the water polo match, meaning a great advertisement for this field of sports.

Plus, the NBC impressively paid an amount of 7.75 billion USD broadcasting fee to the International Olympic Committee. Such an amount of money could never have been paid by European public television, hence the Americans have been having the major say in the schedule, right until 2032, according to the contract. Also, the Rio Olympics will be the tenth Games in the USA that is broadcasted by the NBC since 1964.

Moreover, ever since the Seoul Olympic Games in 1988 their right to the broadcast is uninterrupted, and previously the London Olympics of 2012 meant a great milestone: 219 million people followed the events through NBC. The channel, thus, broke the record: the London Olympic Games became the most watched world competition ever, followed by the Beijing Summer Olympics. The site, therefore, suggests that the channel is pretty much going to compete with itself.

Unlike at the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014, this time the IOC came to terms with the European Broadcasting Union, and agreed with the public TVs through them. Here, in Hungary, the MTVA made an exclusive agreement on the broadcasting of the Olympics: they paid 2 million EUR to the IOC, meaning that Hungarians will have the opportunity to watch the events on channels M4 and M5 only. A crew of 54 people will be working in each location, though, there will be not studio built in Rio.

Therefore, it is now certain that the Hungarian TV audience will have to stay up late in the night, 11-12 pm, to watch, for example, Emese Szász, epée fencer, and Éva Csernoviczki, judoka, competing at the Olympics. Whereas, everyone interested in the 400m medley swimming would need to set an alarm for quite an early time: Gergely Gyurta and Dávid Verrasztó will be found in the pool at around 3am, while Katinka Hosszú and Zsuzsanna Jakabos will start swimming at about sunrise. All of the semi-finals and finals of swimming will be held at 3-5am, August 7-14.

Also, fans of ping-pong will need to sleep well before match days, as Petra Lovas and Georgina Póta will play at 11-3am. The pugilists, Balázs Bacskai and Zoltán Harcsa would have matches after midnight provided they qualify to the best four. Besides, Áron Szilágyi, London’s Olympic Champion of fencing will make us all root for him in front of the telly casually at 3am. Same as the shotput events featuring the European Champion, Anita Márton competing at around 3am, on August 13.

The water polo match of Hungary v. Australia will be held at 1.50am, just like the further ones against Japan and Brazil. The wrestlers will start their fights at about 9pm and by midnight, all groups will have finished fighting. Therefore, it is advised that everyone starts preparing for the new routine of going to bed late and getting up early, which is going to be necessary for being able to root for the Hungarian sportspeople.

Medals are expected in the fields of swimming, water polo, judo, fencing, wrestling and shotput. Make sure not to miss the great excitements of the big events of the Rio Olympic Games and have your fingers crossed for the Hungarians, because, you know, it happens only once in 4 years. Wish all the best luck to the team, and all the fun for the audience watching the Games!

Copy editor: bm

Source: mno.hu