Watching the Olympics through non-traditional media is a new trend by Zuzana Zelenakova

More and more people prefer to watch the Olympics through less traditional media such as the Internet, cellphones. And according to the experts this tendency will continue to rise. Just a click of the mouse and people can watch the Olympic broadcast live anytime anywhere if they have access to the Internet. "We've had a continuing digital explosion," said Timo Lumme, head of TV and marketing for the International Olympic Committee. "We now have the same amount of hours covered globally on digital media -- internet, mobile -- as we have on the old media broadcasting, and a quarter of that is mobile." Given the expectations that non-traditional media audience will reach abo! ut 3.5 million people, US network NBC is worried that its profits will drop as a result. NBC paid a record amount of money for broadcast rights for Beijing as well as Vancouver Olympics in the US, reported $2.2 million. "The IOC has never forced any broadcaster to pay, it's a bidding process," he said. "Whoever wishes to pay the most gets the deal. That's the way it's been and that's the way it will be in the future." When it comes to online viewers of the Olympics, many IT experts were skeptical about businesses being able to handle the crush of online traffic as the employees, as faithful sports fans, will watch the Games. `If there's a big hockey game or something going on...that link that they use to the outside world may become saturated because everyone's trying to get all this content from the Internet,'' said Daryl Wilson from IT solutions firm Dimension Data Canada. According to him, many businesses could find it difficult to perform simple actions such as accessin! g email or sending messages, if they do not restrain non-busin! ess onli ne traffic in some way.

related story (sgx16591): http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100223/tc_nm/us_olympics_media;...

by Zuzana Zelenakova for SigEx Ventures (http://sigexventures.com)

SigEx Ventures's matrix of properties are quickly becoming leaders in digital telebroadcasting, free content delivery allowing people to easily talk, view, upload and share through free online TV broadcasting, free unlimited global calls, video blogs and SMS. SigEx Ventures invests in projects deploying "free" to add-on royalty revenue models