While organizations governing rugby, baseball and cricket clamp down on digital and wireless reporting from sporting venues, London’s 2012 Olympics organizers are instead embracing mobile media.  According to Silicon: “One of the projects being looked at is a way to encourage spectators and competitors to capture digital photos on their cameras and phones, and upload and share them on the internet.” That would be in stark contrast to efforts from several sporting governing bodies, recently reported by sister site paidContent.org, to restrict online video, photos and text commentary posted by non-rightsholding media staff at several other big events. Organizations are trying to protect broadcasters’ rights, but it may be harder for a 2012 rightsholder like NBCU to argue with an organization like the International Olympic Committee.

London 2012 new media head Alex Balfour: “Our new media channels will be the number-one way for people to share, access and participate in the Games. People under 20 use social networking instead of email. It’s important we make the most of that opportunity. ... We are thinking you have to actually embrace that and build a framework for people to do that.”

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