TORONTO – Bell has forged an agreement with Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium to provide its customers with exclusive access to Olympic Games content on both Bell Mobility and Bell TV.
The Consortium, which is the official Canadian broadcaster of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, will provide Bell with 4500 hours of content from its 10 networks in 22 languages, all in high definition for Bell TV HD subscribers.
Bell Mobility customers will also be able to access exclusive, dedicated broadcast feeds from nine venues on their mobile phones, including two “venue feeds” that will provide unedited and uninterrupted coverage of the competitions as they take place. However, customers will need a Samsung OMNIA II, declared the official mobile device of the Games, to take advantage of the full slate of exclusive programming.
Despite Rogers’ 20% stake in the Broadcast Consortium, president Keith Pelley told Cartt.ca that Bell had an exclusive window of negotiation for the rights due to its national sponsorship with the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC).
“We kept Rogers abreast of (the window) and the negotiations, but Bell wanted to be part of this and wanted the exclusive content”, Pelley said. “Despite the fact that we’re 20% Rogers, this was Bell’s card to play and Bell played it.”
In a slick media conference held at Bell TV headquarters in Toronto on Tuesday, Bell’s chief brand officer and president of Bell Mobility, Wade Oosterman, called the partnership “the most substantive broadcast sponsorship agreement in Canadian Olympic history.”
“We know most people would like to attend the Games live, and for those that can’t, this agreement really delivers a virtual front row seat to every event,” Oosterman said, flanked by monitors that read ‘Bell: Cheering just got better’.
The partnership also gives Bell exclusive media sponsorship rights and exclusivity in the fixed and mobile telecommunications products category.
