How Milano Cortina 2026 is redefining sports broadcasting with cloud production, AI-driven workflows, and fully virtualized live sports delivery.
Milano Cortina 2026 is not just another Olympic Games. Both Summer and Winter Olympics always represent significant pivot points for the broadcast industry. It is here that new technology is often first introduced and later goes on to become the de facto sports broadcast standard one or two Games later.
Progress is fast. The 2006 Torino Winter Olympics were the first to be broadcast end to end in HD. By the time we got to London 2012, the majority of viewers in many of the major markets were watching in the format. From the same event, 2500 hours of coverage were available online. By the time the industry reached Paris 2024, that figure had ballooned up to 11,000 hours.
These Games offer two defining inflection points. First, they represent a decisive shift toward a fully software-defined, cloud-enabled model for delivering live sport at global scale. Second, they showcase precisely what AI can do when embedded in broadcast workflows.
The Truly Virtual Games
The numbers, as with everything to do with the Olympics, are large ones. Over 800 cameras and 1800 microphones are capturing over 6500 hours of content that is being distributed via 44 simultaneous HD feeds, 44 UHD feeds, and over 1500 multilaterals. All venues are linked to the IBC (International Broadcast Center) by 100G fiber, a huge upgrade on the 10G network used during Paris 2024.
Paris 2024 featured 38 venues with 625 data services to the IBC. Milano Cortina 2026 has roughly half the number of venues, will be handling more than 610 services, nearly the same volume, but with far greater efficiency and resilience.
As the Games host broadcaster Olympic Broadcast services (OBS) writes, “This evolution underscores a clear trend: as broadcast operations become more complex and data-intensive, the network infrastructure must scale accordingly.
Milano Cortina 2026 needs such a robust, high-capacity backbone precisely because it is moving into software-defined, cloud production. More than an estimated 50–60% of coverage is being delivered remotely to broadcasters via cloud and IP-based systems. For the first time at a Winter Games, multiple venues are being served by fully virtualized OB (outside broadcast) vans, replacing racks of dedicated equipment with cloud-based switching, mixing, and monitoring systems.
These virtual units deliver the same production capabilities as conventional OB trucks but with a far smaller physical footprint and the ability to be managed remotely. In parallel, OBS is piloting a fully cloud-based Master Control Room and transitioning Technical Operations Centres to virtual dashboards accessible from anywhere.
For an industry facing the perfect storm of rising production costs, skills shortages, and sustainability pressures, not to mention the problems of securing ROI in the face of rising sports rights costs, this shift matters. It demonstrates that even the most complex live sports events can be produced using software-defined architectures that scale elastically and reduce on-site dependency.
That will help the hyperscalers and streaming companies that are looking at increasing their sports coverage in the future to confidently mount more ambitious productions from multi-week events such as this.
AI Enables Scale and Personalization
If Milano Cortina 2026’s mature use of cloud and virtualized production represents the culmination of trends that started several Games ago, arguably this is the first Olympics to really lean heavily into AI at many parts of the production chain.
Artificial intelligence is deeply embedded in these Games. AI-driven systems are being used to:
- Generate automated highlights within minutes of key sporting action, delivering ready-to-publish clips from every sport to every platform while preserving high editorial standards
- Produce real-time 360-degree replays with stroboscopic analysis
- Deliver coverage of individual athletes to broadcasters from AI-tracking cameras
- Enhance signature sounds in audio while preserving ambient and crowd noise
- Power computer-vision graphics that translate complex athletic performance into understandable data overlays
Figure skating is a great example of this approach. “We’re using computer vision to measure jump height, airtime, and speed,” says Mark Wallace OBS Chief Content Officer. “And we’ve developed a jump map that tracks where skaters take off and land. It’s fast, it’s precise, and it adds a whole new layer to the storytelling.”
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, AI is also being tested for automatic media description, generating structured metadata that makes content easier to search, clip, and distribute across platforms.
For broadcasters and platform operators, this approach is significant. It points toward a future where AI is about deepening engagement as well as providing operational leverage by reducing manual workflows, decreasing time-to-publish, and enabling more granular personalization.
And while the Olympics remains free-to-air, for other sports that look at the pioneering work OBS undertakes in the deployment of new technologies, this will likely lead to enhanced monetization opportunities in the future.
Reflecting Industry Changes
The use of AI is part of a trend to give rights holders what they want and move away from a one-size-fits-all model. OBS’s offering is now modular and allows broadcasters to pick and mix what they want from a menu.
They can access live feeds, clips, graphics, and social-ready content either on-site at the IBC or remotely via cloud infrastructure. Personalized feeds, meanwhile, such as AI-assisted athlete-centric coverage in biathlon or enhanced data overlays in figure skating, give rights-holders more control over how stories are told to their audiences.
And underlying all of this is OBS’s long-standing “more with less” philosophy. OBS has been serious about its sustainability mission for decades, and remains committed to reducing its footprint. Despite producing more content than any previous Winter Games, the Milano Cortina IBC will be the smallest ever for a Winter edition. Remote production, virtualization, and cloud workflows are not only reducing costs but also lowering power consumption (by 33% compared to the Beijing 2022 Winter Games), reducing material use, and lessening environmental impact.
It also makes getting to the next Games easier. Back in 2008, it took a whole year to set up the broadcast operation for the Summer Games. It took OBS under five months to get everything up and running for Milano Cortina. And with minds already turning to Los Angeles 2028, having as much time in hand to plan the next advancements in broadcast technology, especially the next generation of AI deployments, can only be a good thing.
