CUBE Q&A: ANDREW GEORGIOU AND SCOTT YOUNG

Why have you taken the Cube in this virtual direction and how does the new environment enhance the viewing experience?

Andrew Georgiou: Firstly, the Cube gives our talent a better environment at different times of the day so there is a different outlook for the audience. They’ve got two to three weeks of coverage and with the same setting it can get a little monotonous so providing a different setting for everyone in order to take them to a different space, a different place, a different setting is key. If we are doing something more relaxed, we can be in a soft area. If we are doing an analysis, it will be more formal area. Different times of day, different lighting, you’ve different ways to provide a better atmosphere and more authenticity for the viewer to enjoy the Games.

What is the role of discovery+ throughout the Games?

Andrew Georgiou: discovery+ is our number one strategic priority as a business. The transition to discovery+ began this year and has been a watershed moment for the company. In the markets where discovery+ was launched; Finland, Norway, Denmark, The Netherlands, The U.K and Italy, discovery+ is our primary destination for sports fans. 

We will be using all of our platforms both paid, owned and operated to point people to discovery+ being the best place to enjoy the Olympics and the only place in each of these markets where you will be able to get everything. discovery+ allows a sports fan to choose what they want to watch and when they want to watch – if they will want a curated experience, if they want storytelling through a live channel, they have Eurosport 1 and 2, as well as pop up channels which will have a curated experience of the story told. There might be rowing fans or cycling fans or fencing fans who want to see the surfing because it’s new and discovery+ will allow them to choose that sport and visit that sport in the contents where it’s their choice to go and see it. So we’re certainly focused on discovery+ as being our primary destination in the markets where it has been launched and we’re certainly saying to the fans this is an opportunity for you to enjoy an experience which is more than just a live linear channel experience; you can get that as well on discovery+ but it’s much more than that as well. It has all the benefits of the digital world. 

How many sports and events are available to be analysed via the Cube’s AR technology? 

Scott Young: We’re very quickly building out all of the key sports that have a broad appeal across European markets. We’re working with developers very quickly to push the software as fast as we can get it across the new sports and emerging sports coming up too. It’s a mixture between our creative ingenuity and software developers so we can start to understand how to bring those sports to life in the Cube. It’s not just an analysis tool like you see in other sports such as cricket for instance where you can see the balls being bowled; this takes very different software to bring those sports to life. As technology is developing as fast as our appetite is, we use gaming engines like Unreal to develop a connection with far greater speed than using traditional video graphics. So leaning on the gaming world is speeding up the development of this, supply and demand is probably our biggest challenge. We’re confident we will have six or seven sports in place where we can do immersive explanation and everything will be well in place for Beijing. 

Is teleportation and the Cube something you see as the future of sports broadcasting?

Scott Young: Remote production is a really key part of international sports production these days. We’re absolutely focused on our content and we want our content to be as rich as possible. We want to be able to connect with those who have actually been competing. It’s the athletes’ stories to tell and we want to make sure we’re as close to them as possible so we need to make sure we have the technology to make sure those athletes are as close to us as possible. The Cube doesn’t replace our proximity - we still have teams here on the ground with our journalists, with live cameras at the mix zones and at the venues. What we don’t need to do is start to bring hundreds of people to be able to interact with different markets across the world. I mean Reshmin [Chowdhury] speaks numerous languages; she can do an interview with an athlete in a number of different languages, and we can then send that segment off into other studio programmes in other markets which in effect has saved us a great deal of effort. We’re an international sports broadcaster producing global sports, so when you look at the complexity of what we do everyday, on the scale of what we do, we have the technology to move across sports, across our platforms every day. 

Watch every unmissable moment of Tokyo 2020 on discovery+, Eurosport and Eurosport App from Friday 23 July across Europe (except Russia)