MUMBAI: With a little over a year to go before the curtain goes up on the 38th edition of what is considered to be pinnacle of sporting excellence -The Olympic Games Athens 2004 - the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has been busy putting into place broadcast deals across the globe. 
The event takes place in Greece - the father of the event - from 13-29 August 2004. The largest radio and TV networks of the world have secured broadcasting rights for the event and will be present in Athens with around 12,000 employees including journalists, directors, technicians amongst others.
Revenues from radio and TV broadcasting rights for Athens 2004 are expected to reach around $730 million. The organisations with whom deals have been concluded include the Asia Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU). Countries participating in the ABU include India, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand amongst others.
Other broadcasters that the IOC has reached include the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Television New Zealand, Chinese Taipei Television Pool, and Caribbean Broadcasting Union (CBU) Unions of radio and TV networks.
More recently the IOC and Japan Consortium signed an agreement. Japan Consortium will transmit the Games to Japan's six largest independent television stations and also to the members of the National Association of Broadcasters. Japan Consortium will bring to Athens around 1,000 employees to meet broadcasting requirements.
In a related development, Stefi Productions, Gearhouse Broadcast and GlobeCast, the companies behind Athens Broadcast Services have announced that their website has gone live.
www.athensbroadcastservices.com has been designed to outline services that will be provided through their broadcast base for non-rights holders during the Olympics next year.
The broadcast base is a physical office space just minutes away from the main Olympic stadium in Athens, which will contain work space, studio facilities, an equipment rental shop, edit suites, radio suites, uplink facilities, live locations and much more.
Targeting broadcasters, the broadcast base will enable producers and technical crew to carry out any production work in Athens literally minutes away from the action.
Athens Broadcast Services' project manager Andre Nel said: "We know that space and production facilities will be at a premium in Athens next year and wanted to create something now that programme makers will view to be of value. I think that the option of a total solutions provider saves a lot of headaches for all parties involved with interaction with just one point of contact for all their production needs."