The International Olympic Committee is launching its own video channel for the games in cooperation with YouTube, to territories in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, the IOC said Monday.
Clips of various competitions and other Olympic content will be available via the YouTube site. The channel will be available starting August 6 in a total of 77 countries and territories where exclusive broadcast or online rights to the Beijing games have not been sold.
The IOC said that the service would be geo-blocked, so that only viewers accessing YouTube from the authorized areas will be able to use it.
The move comes in part to minimize pirated rebroadcasts of the events, and also to offer fans in some areas that may not have coverage the opportunity to see more content, the IOC said. It did not specify in which languages the content would be available.