This year was a packed summer of sports, including the European Football Championship, the Tour de France, and the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo. Apart from the European Football Championship, all those sporting events were accompanied by Dutch successes for the home viewer. The NOS has been able to see that orange summer in the viewing figures. The sports broadcasts reached a total of 92% of the Dutch population, which amounts to 14.8 million people who experienced the sports summer via the NOS channels. NOS director Gerard Timmer looks with pride at the broadcaster's results. At the same time, he sees even greater significance for the sport among those beautiful figures.
The sports summer was fully followed by the Dutch public on the various channels of the NOS. Despite the early retirement of Frank de Boer's Dutch national team, the European Football Championship stood head and shoulders above that with a reach of 14.1 million viewers (87% of the population). The Tour de France then reached 10.4 million viewers (64% of the Dutch), the Olympic Games 11.3 million viewers (70% of the Dutch) and the Paralympic Games 8.7 million viewers (54% of the Dutch). . In addition, the NOS also noticed the growth in online viewers: during the sports summer, a sports page on NOS.nl or in the app was opened 500 million times. "If you look purely at these figures, this once again proves the public value of sports programming at the public 해외스포츠중계", Timmer notes.
Connecting meaning
The director of the NOS mentions this in the light of a broader discussion about sports at the NPO. "Sport is always seen as content that reaches a large audience, including audience groups who do not often watch the NPO. And because it reaches a large audience, it also has a connecting meaning." In recent months, Timmer regularly saw stories about how the Dutch success of athletes and BMX riders has led to new registrations at sports associations. "There is a direct relationship with that you bring it on TV, how you bring it on TV and what stories you tell with it. So in addition to the meaning of the reach of the amount of viewers and the connecting factor, sports on TV also has As a result, it can encourage people to exercise.”
There has been discussion for some time about the impact of top sport success on recreational sports participation. Muller Institute concluded following the won European Championship women's football in 2017, which could not be called a Like Martens effect, because the gold did not lead to an explosive growth of girls at football associations. Yet the idea of 'seeing sports, doing sports' has not let go of Timmer. He therefore decided to do more in-depth research into this in collaboration with the Free University. "We do this out of genuine curiosity," he explains. But there is more to the experienced broadcaster. "I myself have found that sports programming has been talked about too easily in recent years. It is quite easy to criticize the amount of sport that the NPO broadcasts, as if sport has no public value."
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