BBC Sport’s presence at the 2026 Winter Games is centred around a significant evolution in how it is broadcasting this major sporting event, defined by its new ‘digital first’ strategy. The planning for its digital content began at the beginning of editorial planning, when BBC Sport’s team also began thinking about the linear content.

The British broadcaster’s studio for Milano Cortina is based in the centre of the town, where the women’s Alpine skiing events up on the mountain at the Tofane Alpine Skiing Centre, as well as the Curling Olympic Stadium and Sliding Centre, can each be seen through the window behind the presenters.

While traditional television infrastructure remains vital for BBC Sport’s coverage, the ‘digital first’ approach focuses on serving audiences through a variety of social and online platforms as a priority rather than an afterthought. This shift in mindset is ensuring that resources are allocated specifically to meet the consumption habits of younger and underserved audiences who may not engage with linear television.

Tighter integration

While this tighter integration of all platforms is new for Milano Cortina, Gaby Cook, executive editor at BBC Sport, says the key components were there, just not quite as well integrated, in Pyeongchang 2018. She explains: “It was all there; it was just operating a little bit more independently. We’re just bringing it together now. We’ve got really brilliant journalists on our website and on our live text, and it’s just about coming a bit closer and working together on it.”

Cook, speaking at SVG Europe in Cortina, continues: “A TV operation is such a big thing to plan. You could just get sucked into just the TV; the whole logistics of all the bookings and the planning and everything that goes into it, the look of the studio and the presenters and all the experts that you’re managing. But there are other component parts that we’re now really thinking about in our planning.”

Cook goes on: “We started planning the digital content probably two or three months ago. The content that we have planned and produced has all been with our ‘digital first’ approach. It has very much been planned through that lens and it’s worked brilliantly on TV.”

Cross-platform content

At the heart of this strategy is the production of evergreen and cross-platform content designed to live across multiple services. A dedicated team now works to identify stories that can be adapted for different formats, ensuring that a single production effort can result in specialised versions for TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.

Comments Cook: “While one size doesn’t always fit all, what our teams have done so well is thinking about being able to go off to one shoot, but delivering to about four different platforms. So there might be four different versions, but that’s value for money and it’s value to the audience and it’s just a really effective use of resource, but it is flipping things rather than the retro fitting we used to do.”

Cook is focused on bring the cross-platform coverage together. She explains: “My job is really to bring all the platforms together, TV being quite a big part of that. This is definitely where we hang all of our coverage from, from this studio presentation [here in Cortina]. We’ve got three presenters throughout the day.

“In other locations – like Milan and Livigno – we’re utilising mixed zones and commentary box cameras really effectively. We’re able to bring in all that knowledge and expertise, for example, from Robin Cousins, a former Olympic champion who’s down at the figure skating in Milan, and our guys that are doing the freestyle sports over in Livigno. It is working really well.”

Interactive elements

The integration of digital and linear platforms is further enhanced by interactive elements that bridge the gap between experts and the audience. Live text commentaries on the website now incorporate questions submitted by viewers through QR codes, allowing for a two-way dialogue that traditional broadcasting often lacks.

Says Rachel Wright, BBC Sport’s head of production: “The baseline sport coverage and the standards that we like to have, that’s a given. On this Games, it’s really been about that integration across platforms, between the live text on the website, the commentators are feeding into that. We’re getting questions through the QR codes and through the website pages that we’re then feeding into the live commentaries.

“I think that’s really given a bit of a different aspect this time round, really playing to all the strengths of all the constituent parts that we’ve got and making sure that navigation’s been a really big focus this time, to make sure people know what’s on where and where they can see it and how they can get different things from all our different platforms. It feels it’s worked quite well for us this time round,” Wright continues.

Cook comments: “The BBC is so powerful, it just needs to slightly come together and connect. When we’ve got these brilliant experts that are doing our TV broadcast, after they’ve finished they could be doing a deeper dive on our website and going into a lot more detail beyond the broadcast. That’s what we’re trying to do.

“That audience interaction, bringing the audience closer to our experts so that they can ask a question, is great. We had a question that came in from the audience to our snowboard commentators, “could you ever hold the Winter Olympics in Scotland?”. It was a really interesting debate because [the commentators] were actually saying, “well, to be fair, you could build a snowpark in the Cairngorms, but t’s just unfortunately the mountains aren’t quite long enough for a downhill”. It’s the sort of question that probably our presenters would never ask, but they had a really good old chat and debate about it. It’s just that point of difference.”

Strong viewing figures

Talking about the overnight TV viewing figures on the 13 February, Cook says the peak was 3.8 million viewers for the content which was viewed on BBC 2, not the prime BBC1 channel, and she estimates that the BBC iPlayer figures would add a further 900,000 on top of that.

Cook is more than happy with those numbers. She says: “For winter sports that people are not that familiar with, and in an era where we all know linear viewing figures are declining, those are really healthy numbers. Linear is holding its own.

“But the exciting bit is the digital reach,” Cook continues. “The BBC has announced a partnership with YouTube, so we can put more content there. We have a BBC Sport channel on YouTube, and that’s just a different way of reaching an audience that is that younger audience that are perhaps harder to reach. That’s working well, and then with all the social numbers and the clips, vertical video on our website – those different ways of consuming – all of that is looking really healthy. It’s really gratifying.”

Wright adds it is all about a balance between linear and digital: “It’s that part of having content that can live in different places, but also knowing the value of delivering to TikTok or Instagram over linear; it’s that balance of where you put your resourcing.”

Cook agrees: “It’s the balance of getting out to the action and making the most of the rights that we’ve got and showing all this wonderful live sport. The biggest shift [for Milano Cortina] is where you’re putting your resource. We refer to it as digital first. And that content works really well for TV – it can be really well adapted for TV – but the way we used to work is always for TV and then it was really hard to make it feel right and relevant [on digital]. It was an afterthought more.”

Cook adds: “It was all a bit retrofitted before. I think that’s probably the single biggest thing that we’re doing now, creating that different mindset.”