How Corona maybe changes events forever

Due to the Corona pandemic, virtual events have experienced a real boom in recent months. Whether digital exhibitions, trade fairs, congresses, or seminars — never before have there been so many different offerings. Even the biggest sporting events in the world, which are largely financed by ticket revenues, have had to look for digital alternatives.

For companies in the media industry, this means that they have to, or rather should deal with these new circumstances if they don’t want to lose touch. I have been part of the media team of the Austrian Paralympic Committee since 2015 and have been a permanent part of the Austrian delegation at the Paralympics since Rio 2016. Corona has also shaken things up at the third-largest sporting event in the world. Many challenges, as well as new opportunities, have arisen. I would like to focus on one in particular in this blog.

Tokyo 2020 and its challenges

On 24.03.2020 Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020 were postponed to 2021. Only a few months later the Tokyo 2020 Organisation Committee announced that the Paralympic Games will take place in 2021, but without an international audience. A few months before the start of the Summer Games it was announced that no audience at all will be allowed. Very quickly it became clear that there would be no hospitality house, better known as “Austria House ‘’, as we knew it. After this difficult decision, we began to think about how we could transform the Austria House into the digital world.

My tasks include video production and social media support before and during the Paralympics. So I am the digital bridge between the host city and Austria. Under normal circumstances, my main area of operation is the Austria House. My team and I already started to think of alternatives to a real Austria House in January 2021. Quickly the idea of the virtual Austria House came up.

The virtual Austria House

In order to understand why a virtual Austria House is necessary at all and which goals should be pursued with it, we have to take a look at the classic Austria House. The Austria House is a hub for sports, business and media. In addition, athletes have the opportunity to celebrate their successes with their family and friends. It was our goal from the beginning to transform this into the digital world. Although no foreign guests were allowed, they should still be able to be part of the Paralympics in Tokyo. The following points should also find a place in the virtual version.

1. First and foremost, it was about giving our athletes an appropriate stage. The Paralympics are still not represented in the same way as the Olympic Games, at least in the Austria media. In this case, we saw the pandemic and the measures as an opportunity. With the virtual Austria House we were able to create a platform for our athletes on which they had the opportunity to present themselves and their achievements.
2. The Austria House is financed entirely by sponsorship. Before the Corona crisis, various contracts had already been signed and funds already paid out. To prevent a reversal, our goal was to create a service package for our sponsors in the digital world. For companies, sporting events of this size are interesting because they can present themselves with absolute top performances and have the opportunity to address a new target group.
3. For the media, the Austria House is a great place to meet the athletes away from the competition venue. This gives journalists a completely different perspective and offers athletes the opportunity to interact with media representatives in a relaxed atmosphere.

The implementation

All these goals converged in the virtual house and the “Parlaympic Report” was created. Every day during the Paralympics, we broadcast about 40 minutes from the Paralympic Village and produced a total of 13 episodes of the “Paralympic Report”, which were broadcast on YouTube, Facebook, and our website. The viewers in Austria were provided daily with detailed athlete interviews, great competitions, and exciting behind-the-scenes insights from the Paralympic Village. Sponsors, former athletes, and media representatives who could not be on site were invited to our studio in Vienna.

About the technical processing. Basically, there were two teams. The production team in Vienna, which took care of the studio and the guests in Vienna, and the team in Tokyo, delivered the content from on location. The team in Tokyo consisted of me and an assistant who supported me on location. I delivered the video content on-site and organized and conducted the athlete interviews. All the content was then sent to Vienna, where it was edited into a broadcast.

As mentioned above, the Austria House is not only a place for sports, business and media but also offers the families and friends of our athletes the opportunity to celebrate. In our virtual version, we also invited the families and friends of our athletes to join in the celebrations. They were able to join via Zoom and congratulate their heroes personally and live.

Conclusion

This year I have worked as much as ever before. I had to create something new from scratch in a very short time. I didn’t know if it would work out and not everyone was convinced of it. But it worked and it worked very well. Considering the circumstances and the fact that I was once again a one-woman show on location, I look back with a lot of pride on one of the hardest, but professionally most successful summers.

I think that we have created a concept that also has the potential to live on after the pandemic. Many stakeholders profited from this concept. Our athletes, because they had more airtime than ever before. Our sponsors, because they also had a much larger broadcasting area as well as families and friends, who even in non-pandemic times can not always travel to the games due to greater distance, had the opportunity to be part of it.

And now? Do it all again. On December 3rd there are 3 months left until the opening of the Winter Games in Beijing, which unfortunately have to take place under the same conditions as the Summer Games. Although due to the postponement of the Summer Games the distance and therefore the preparation time for the Winter Paralympics is as short as ever, I can at least approach the whole thing a bit more relaxed and am already looking forward to the next challenge.