Milano Cortina 2026: Watching people struggle as BBC Sport goes for gold on social media at the Winter Olympics
The BBC Sport studios for the Winter Olympics is based in Cortina, in the Nations Village, which is in the thick of all the action
At Paris 2024, BBC Sport enjoyed fantastic social media video views, hitting 730 million. That broke down into: Instagram 280 million, TikTok 193 million, Facebook 149 million, X 95 million, YouTube 19 million.
While Milano Cortina, like all Winter Games, is set to be a much smaller Games overall – with seven medals a day and eight sports, as opposed to 20-plus medals a day and 32 sports at Paris 2024 – the European time zone means that viewers on BBC One and Two, as well as iPlayer, will have everything they need to absorb every moment of Milano Cortina, free to air. Social media has also not been forgotten by BBC Sport, and it is an important part of the broadcaster’s coverage plans.
Watching people struggle
On social media for the Winter Olympics, BBC Sport is putting together some fun as well as educational pieces – the latter being a cornerstone of traditional BBC coverage – that will bring in views. Much of that content is set to be based on, laughs Ron Chakraborty, BBC Sport’s head of major events and general sport, “an absolute appeal of watching people struggle”.
He explains further: “When we speak to an athlete, we want to gather a suite of content that works across all platforms. With Keely Hodgkinson [English middle-distance runner] back in Paris we did a normal conventional TV piece with her and Kelly Holmes, who was the last person to win the 800 metres gold for Great Britain. But we also did a piece that we thought would work on social, which was ‘How fast is Keeley really?’.
“That was basically taking people, putting them on treadmills, setting the treadmill to the speed Keely runs at, and seeing how long they can last. I think that one got around 8.5 million views on social.
“But it’s also that educational element of how difficult this, which is really, really appealing,” he continues. “Obviously the Winter Olympics is an absolute gift for that because they’re not sports you see for three years and 50 weeks, and suddenly everyone falls in love with curling and they want to know, “how does this work, how does the scoring work, why are the shoes different?”. And obviously things like sliding and, “how do you get into sliding and how do you know you’re all right, spinning down a course at a hundred miles an hour in a skeleton?”.
“I think there’s massive potential for the explainers we want to do across social, and there’s great potential there to do the classic BBC educating form of entertainment, but at the same time for a modern audience.”
BBC Sport’s studio for the Winter Olympics is currently being built in Cortina d’Ampezzo in the Alps, in the Nations Village
Capturing moments and mistakes
The audience attracted to the Winter Olympics is one looking for excitement and thrills, and the odd mistake in the snow.
Chakraborty says: “Having the first Winter Olympics in the European time zone in 20 years gives us a great opportunity to have moments that bring the nation together, which we historically haven’t had with many Winter Olympics. At the same time there’s so many sports there with the wow factor of, “did you see this moment? Did you see that snowboard gold medal moment?”.”
Chakraborty adds that with snow and ice often comes some spectacular mistakes, which make fantastic TV viewing. He says: “Things go wrong; there are so many times when there’s great moments in the Winter Olympics where people have made a mistake. There’s the great Australian speed skater, Steven Bradbury, where everyone fell on the final bend and he was fifth and managed to win it. Then there was one in 2006, Lindsey Jacobellis the snowboarder was going to win this race, then decides to do a little trick on the final jump, falls over, and freed up the woman behind her to then win it.”
Steven Bradbury, an Australian former short-track speed skater and four-time Olympian, won Australia’s first-ever Winter Olympic gold medal despite a dramatic last-lap crash that took out all four of his rivals at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in the men’s 1,000 metre final.
At the 2006 Turin Olympics, Lindsey Jacobellis crashed on the second-to-last jump of the snowboardcross final when in the lead, thanks to a touch of showboating. This allowed Switzerland’s Tanja Frieden to pass her and win gold, while Jacobellis recovered in time to claim silver.
Chakraborty continues: “I think there’s always going to be those moments. The Winters is always a little bit mad. The flip side of that is there’s a lot of danger involved in it as well, and I think that kind of tension and jeopardy is a real appeal of it too.
“I think the Winters always has that appeal of great snackable content, but at the same time we’ve got that added advantage this time that it’s in our time zone, so there could be great live moments for people to tune in as well. We’re hoping it’s a bit of both,” concludes Chakraborty.
Read more:
Milano Cortina 2026: Picture gallery showing the construction of BBC Sport’s Winter Olympics studio