If, like most people on the planet, you won’t be able to attend the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, you now have a suitable alternative. According to the New York Times, NBC will stream the games in their entirety courtesy of their website nbcolympics.com. That’s right, sports junkies — all 32 games will be available for you to watch, which means you’ll have access to all of the table tennis you could ever hope to handle.
NBC Sports Digital Media general manager Rick Cordella’s philosophy regarding the games is actually quite simple: “Whatever is on schedule that day, if cameras are on it, we’ll stream it.” That approach to the games is going to make a lot of people extremely happy.
In previous years, NBC has been rather stingy with the events it chooses to stream. During the Winter Olympics in 2010, only two sports — curling and hockey — were streamed to the masses, and that had more to do with keeping the events out of primetime than it did anything else. In 2008, 25 games were broadcast to the masses via the company’s official website.
The decision to stream every game is due in part to the way people consume video. Given the vast array of devices that are capable of streaming everything from South Park episodes to college sports, it only makes sense that NBC would attempt to ensnare more viewers by making the Olympics available to anyone with the bandwidth to watch it.
2012 Summer Olympics takes place from July 27th to August 12th, 2012.