Milano Cortina marks the first time since London 2012 that NRK has had the full rights to show all the Winter Olympic action on TV. The team at the free-to-air Norwegian broadcaster are therefore throwing every resource they can at these Games, and they are ready to shred the gnar, as skiers and snowboarders put it – pushing hard on the most challenging courses.

Speaking from the NRK main Winter Olympics studio – which was in the process of being built at the time we spoke – Øyvind Nyborg, who will be onsite in Italy directing NRK’s own feed from the biathlon, says: “This is our first Olympics since London in 2012, where we have full free-to-air rights. Since then – 14 years ago – a lot has happened digitally, but then everything was linear, more or less. So this is the first time we are doing [an event as large as this] using so much digital, because back then ‘digital’ was online journalism at most.”

In Norway, NRK now has the full free-to-air rights for the Winter Games, while Warner Bros. Discovery has the pay-to-view rights. For Paris 2024, NRK was able to show the athletics and some triathlon and speed walking coverage on TV, along with highlights, but back to the previous Winter Olympics, it only had radio rights.

Andreas Sommerseth, the head director for the Winter Olympics who will be producing the final cut for broadcast and coordinating what comes in from Italy, says that when NRK lost the free to air rights to the Olympics, he thought it was the end of an era: “In 2012, we worked in London, both of us [Sommerseth and Nyborg], and we were so sad because we were thinking, “okay, it’s never coming back”. Because we thought as soon as the commercial channels got ahold of the Olympics, we were going to be out. So we are so incredibly glad that it’s back.”

“It’s the Olympics!”

Sommerseth comments on what is happening at the broadcaster right now: “You can see that in NRK now everyone’s kind of waking up and saying, “ok, it’s the Olympics!”. We haven’t done anything this big since 2012 and a lot has happened, so there’s a lot of investment going on. Also, this is like a small Olympics but in two years, we have the Summer Olympics, which is a giant. So there’s a lot of resources going into this Games and the whole company is a part of it.”

The broadcaster is taking over its main linear channel NRK1 from 9am to 9pm daily throughout the Games, and NRK2 and NRK3 will be used occasionally as well, in addition to the streams of every sport on NRK TV.

Every sport will be available on NRK TV except ice hockey, which NRK sold to Verdens Gang (VG), a Norwegian media group. Comments Sommerseth: “Ice hockey is actually been aired by VG. It’s the biggest Norwegian newspaper. They’re doing some streaming sports, like NFL, and they have all the ice hockey [for the Winter Olympics]. We are going to show the semifinals and the final, but the rest is on VG.”

Nyborg explains why NRK sold the ice hockey rights: “The sheer volume of ice hockey is quite large if you’re going to do both genders [at the Games]. There’s a lot of games going on and you need multiple pools of experts and commentators, so it’s a lot of resources being taken away for the ice hockey. So instead of doing it halfway, so it was made a decision to sell it.”

Adds Sommerseth: “Also, Norway has not qualified for the ice hockey, which also makes it easier to sell.”

Exciting the audience

On how NRK getting the Games back on TV will translate in terms of viewership on both linear and digital channels, the NRK team is hopeful. However, Jostein Jære Fjeldskår, NRK sports department’s technical and production coordinator who is overseeing the entire production for the Winter Olympics, says: “We can see over recent years that the general interest in winter sports seem to have sort of declined, but when the World Championship in Norway last year was back on NRK, suddenly the viewership was back up again. The numbers were good. So we’re excited. Hopefully we can bring all the audience back to us for the period and yeah, it’s going to be good.”

NRK has high hopes for its viewership of the Games. Yet Nyborg says: “Now we have to fight for a million viewers. The audience has fragmented a lot [since we last held the Olympics rights] so some people will watch it on their phone, some will listen to the radio, some follow the live coverage online. We’ll have to gather all these numbers to see the total views.”

He adds: “For sure, in Norway in sports, winter sports and also football is quite popular. We can easily do shares that others can only dream of; 85% of everything.”