LAUSANNE: The International Olympic Committee (IOC) Monday announced that all media rights in Europe for the four Olympic Games in the 2026-2032 period have been awarded to the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and Warner Bros. Discovery.
Following the IOC’s launch of a competitive tender, the EBU and Warner Bros. Discovery presented a joint bid to acquire all media rights across 49 territories in Europe for the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026, the Games of the Los Angeles Olympics 2028, the Olympic Winter Games in 2030 and the Olympic Games Brisbane 2032, as well as for the Youth Olympic Games in the period.
The first IOC partnership with the EBU and its Members dates back to 1956. In 2015, the IOC partnered with Warner Bros. Discovery across Europe for the 2018-2024 Olympic Games.
This new agreement guarantees free-to-air reach for the Games through the EBU’s network of public service broadcasters, the vast majority of which continued Olympic Games coverage across the past three Games in partnership with the IOC and Warner Bros. Discovery.
Starting in 2026, the EBU will hold free-to-air rights on television and digital platforms. Every EBU Member will broadcast more than 200 hours of coverage of the Olympic Summer Games and at least 100 hours of the Olympic Winter Games on TV, with a broad range of radio coverage, live streaming and reporting across web, app and social media platforms.
For Warner Bros. Discovery, today’s announcement extends its position as “Home of the Olympics in Europe” and follows record audiences and digital viewership growth across the past three Olympic Games, with the Olympic Games Paris 2024 ahead. Under the new agreement, it will continue to be the only place to present “every moment” of the Games on its streaming and digital platforms, such as its sports and entertainment streaming service discovery+, and hold full pay TV rights, including for its owned and operated Eurosport channels.
Warner Bros. Discovery and the EBU have a long history of collaborating to deliver complementary coverage of major sporting events, most recently with the International Biathlon Union World Cup and World Championship events, in addition to a host of summer sports events including the World Athletics Championships and cycling’s Tour de France and La Vuelta Grand Tour races.
For the past three editions of the Games, Warner Bros. Discovery oversaw broadcast partnerships with more than 45 free-to-air partners and EBU Members to guarantee broad access to the Games. Together with its own platforms, this drove record audiences, as 372 million people across Europe engaged with the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, 175 million of whom did so on Warner Bros. Discovery’s platforms such as discovery+, while the number of Europeans who visited its platforms for the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 – 156 million – was over 19 times more than the previous Winter Games edition.
