The Associated Press has teamed up with sports information company STATS to launch online products to help broadcasters and other media with their coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
AP members will continue to receive Olympic coverage as part of their core service, called Summer Games. This will include stories and photos from the Beijing games on AP’s text wires and on AP’s hosted web platform, which currently services 750 news organizations worldwide.
In addition to this standard service, AP and STATS are offering an exclusive premium service, Summer Games Plus, which will be available for print, broadcast and/or online use. Customers will be able to create their own online presentation from feeds, or they may take advantage of an online hosted platform built and operated by STATS.
Summer Games Plus will include additional stories, photos, columns, statistical data and multimedia, as well as certain text content provided by NBC Sports and NBC Olympics. The statistical data for Summer Games Plus will be more detailed and in-depth than the core service.
AP plans to staff the Beijing Games with more than 300 journalists. STATS also will complement AP’s coverage with news and features leading up to the games, and will be on-site in Beijing next August. Summer Games Plus begins today and will increase with content as the games approach.
All of the services for U.S. customers will include video links to exclusive NBC Sports and NBC Olympics video on NBCOlympics.com. The Associated Press and NBC recently announced that AP is the exclusive news agency for the distribution of certain text content from NBC Sports and NBC Olympics and the video links. Customers outside the U.S. will not receive the video links because of international restrictions.
“The products from STATS and the AP will provide customers a variety of services to meet their needs for the 2008 games,” said Lou Ferrara, AP’s deputy managing editor for sports and multimedia.
“STATS’ experience in redistributing and supplementing AP’s top-notch coverage uniquely position us to help produce this service, and the result will be a comprehensive Olympic package that any competitive news site would be hard-pressed to do without,” added Brian Orefice, STATS’ director of news and editorial operations.
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