Soccer kicks off the Beijing Summer Olympics, August 6
Full plans for all platforms of coverage by the exclusive U.S. event broadcaster - NBC Universal - have been announced in detail...
Soccer will kick off the Summer Olympic Games on Wednesday, August 6. Overall, USA has a total of 5 Olympic medals in the sport, tied for first place with three other countries. The USA Men have won a silver and bronze, and the Women have won two gold and a silver. Although Brazil has won a combined four medals, they have never won the Olympics - this is the only major soccer tournament they have never won; however, the Samba women were runners-up to the USA the last time in Athens...
On this very first day of competition for any sport, the USA Women will begin defense of their title (won in 2004), by taking on Norway. Although Norway is a traditional power in women's soccer, the USWNT just defeated them in a friendly by a score of 4-0, on July 2. Most of the players in that match for both teams are expecting to be on the final rosters for their respective Olympics squads...
NBC has created a portal for the Games, which includes videos for every sport; many events will be streamed live, and available in HD for the first time. Networks owned by NBC Universal will show live and taped events throughout the Games, which conclude Sunday, August 24...
today's highlights from NBC's press releases, "NBC Universal will present 3,600 hours of coverage for the Beijing Games, including 2,200 hours of live events, the most live coverage in the U.S. of any Olympics ever. Seven networks -- NBC, USA, MSNBC, CNBC, Oxygen, Telemundo and Universal HD -- will broadcast the event on TV, and when combined with NBCOlympics.com, the coverage will total 1,000 more hours than that of all previously televised Summer Games in U.S. history. In addition, NBCOlympics.com's 2,200 total hours of live streaming video coverage is the first live online Olympic coverage in the U.S."
More on NBC, TV news and print coverage 'in a nutshell' here
Official Summer Olympics event site here
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