How the Olympics are reshaping what connected TV can do

As global sports events stack up across the calendar, media companies are navigating a year defined by extended audience attention and peak viewing moments.

For Geir Skaaden, chief products and services officer at Xperi, the scale and duration of events such as the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup created a different engagement dynamic than single-day spectacles.

“Events like the World Cup and the Olympics unfold over weeks, not just a single day,” Skaaden said. “That duration gives them a different kind of cultural impact than one-time events.”

He said the longer run of these events allow publishers and advertisers to connect with audiences across multiple platforms and touchpoints. Social media, athlete-driven content, and traditional broadcast coverage now operate in parallel.

“As much as people want to know the score, I think they also very much connect with the athletes involved as well,” he said. “I actually think it amplifies the value in a big way.”

Expanding access on connected TV

For platform providers, the most visible shift had been the breadth of access enabled by connected TV.

In previous Olympic cycles, viewers with a cable subscription might not have had access to every event. Full live coverage, replays and highlight clips were now available across streaming apps and connected TV devices, often on the same screen as traditional linear channels.

“The breadth of coverage is a lot bigger than it typically would have been,” Skaaden said. “Now you can see really every event live in addition to the scheduled programming. That choice is an incredible change.”

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He said this expanded access also changed the role of primetime broadcasts. With many viewers already aware of results through live streams or social feeds, primetime packages could focus more on context, storytelling and analysis rather than simply delivering outcomes.

“Whoever wanted to care that much about the result, they would have watched it streaming live anyway,” he said. “People pretty much know the outcome and are really looking for enjoying the replay as much as reliving the event, but also understanding more around it.”

Discoverability without dominance

For connected TV operating systems such as TiVo OS, which was developed by Xperi, major sports events create both opportunities and constraints.

During high-profile events, home screens often featured prominent promotional placements. But Skaaden said platforms had to balance visibility with overall user experience.

“As a platform provider, you don’t want it to completely overwhelm either,” he said. “You’re trying to find some balance.”

He expected overall engagement to rise during extended events, even if traditional primetime ratings fluctuated.

“The overall engagement and viewing, I would expect to be up meaningfully based on how we’re able to introduce so many different ways to engage with the content,” he said.

Looking ahead, Skaaden pointed to personalization as a key area of evolution. While global events draw broad audiences, individual preferences vary widely. A Winter Olympics viewer might follow figure skating but not alpine skiing, or hockey but not snowboarding.

“Just someone being a Winter Olympic watcher doesn’t necessarily mean that all that content is relevant to them individually,” he said.

He said recommendation systems already use viewing history to inform suggestions, but predictive personalization remained a work in progress.

“The shortest path is what have they watched already,” he said. “If someone is migrating to certain content types, that gives you insight that could be very relevant.”

More advanced personalization, he suggested, would require improved data integration and the application of artificial intelligence to contextual signals across platforms.

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“You need to continue to leverage more AI and contextual data around people’s engagements on multiple platforms to predict what events might be relevant to them,” he said.

Engagement beyond the live feed

Beyond live competition, Skaaden said connected TV platforms have an opportunity to surface related content, including archival footage and documentaries, during major sports cycles.

By analyzing real-time engagement patterns, platforms could promote adjacent programming that aligned with a viewer’s interests.

“I think CTV has an incredible opportunity given the choice of catalog content,” he said. “By being able to understand how people are engaging with the real-time live, giving them relevant and engaging adjacent content is a great opportunity.”

For platform owners, that engagement also carried commercial implications. While rights holders control in-event advertising, increased traffic to home screens and related programming expand monetization options.

“The increased engagement is the biggest lift,” Skaaden said. “It allows us to develop a user base that feels that our platform is a great portal to venture into what’s relevant for them.”

As sports cycles move from one global event to the next, he sees connected TV platforms as central to how audiences discover, revisit and contextualize those moments.

“These events are great,” he said. “They drive TV sales. They drive platform engagement.”

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