The London Olympics is prioritising the web in its media strategy for the 2012 Games, the event’s chairman Sebastian Coe told the Periodical Publishers Association’s Magazines 2008 conference in London this morning. “The main project is to make it relevant to people up and down the country,” he said. “Pretty much most of our communications strategy over the next four years will be online and web-based.” Coe, the former athlete, spoke of a step change in youth media consumption: “What is a ‘broadcaster’ any longer when I sit on the tube train after a football game and 20 or 30 minutes later, my sons are showing me the goals from the ground earlier?”
“Ninety-five percent of people running the marathon are now coached on the web.” And he called on the assembled publishers to help athletes chronicle their “person odesseys, journeys of distinction” just as he diarised his Olympic exploits for his local Sheffield newspaper. If the gist of Coe’s pitch – a plea for Olympic coverage – is to be heeded, the International Olympic Committee may have done him a favour by recently liberalising rules on athlete blogs and online photo rights.