US network NBC shuns YouTube for Sochi Olympics

Washington, June 13 (IANS/RIA Novosti) United States television network NBC will not team up with YouTube to provide digital footage of next year's Winter Olympics in Russia's Black Sea town of Sochi as it did during the 2012 Summer Games in London.

NBC, which holds the US media rights for the Sochi Olympics next February, partnered with YouTube last year to provide online video footage of last year's London Olympics.

But the network has opted not to team up with the popular video site for Sochi and instead is planning its own content management system for Games, though it is unclear whether this will include a video player or whether the network will team up with another video partner, the US trade publication cited NBC sources as saying Wednesday.

NBC streamed 3,500 hours of live coverage of the London Games via the video player that YouTube provided for the network. Internet viewers streamed more than 20.4 million hours of video of the London Olympics, more than double that of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and 64.4 million hours of live video streams, up more than 350 percent compared to Beijing.

--IANS/RIA Novosti

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