WE Media, a U.S.-based multimedia company, is the official Paralympics webmaster. It publishes WE magazine and a web site (www.wemedia.com} for the disabled. The company has also bought the U.S. television rights to the Paralympics and will produce highlight packages for CBS Sports, Fox Sports Net and Pax TV.
Internet users with a 56.6K or faster connection will be able to watch live coverage of Paralympic events, but those with slower modems will be limited to WE Media’s non-video coverage, which will include results, standings and feature stories.
WE Media will use the host broadcaster’s fees that is provided free to rights holders, and supplement them with its own footage.
Rick Gentile, WEe Media’s executive producer, said he has no idea how many viewers the webcast might attract. The company is advertising its Paralympics coverage on billboards in Sydney and three American cities. A few other web sites have also arranged to link to its site.
Although We Media will have spent about $20 million on its Paralympics television and web projects, it expects to recoup only about $5 million of that in revenue from its television packages and various corporate partnerships. Gentile says direct profit was not the company’s goal. He called the Paralympics the “most dynamic and galvanizing” event for We Media’s customer base and says the company hopes the webcast will be a traffic builder that will lead to future business deals.
The company will begin webcasting half an hour before the opening ceremony on Wednesday (7:30 p.m. Sydney time, or 4:30 a.m. EDT) and it will then post up to three simultaneous streams of mostly live coverage on its site throughout the 11 days of competition.
The streams will run from 9:30 a.m. until 9:30 p.m. Sydney time (6:30 p.m. the evening before until 6:30 a.m. EDT). The rest of the time visitors will be able to watch archived video footage that they can start, stop or skip through at their leisure.
