Summer 2012 included three world-class events at once, which always cause an influx of sports fans to TV screens - the final of the European Football Championship, the Wimbledon tennis tournament and the Summer Olympic Games. The last of them will be broadcasted on a large scale in Russia - five channels will show the Olympics at once.
Two state television channels - Channel One and VGTRK - shared the broadcasts from London in a friendly way. Every day of the Olympics, one of them will choose the competition that he would like to cover, and the next day this right will pass to his colleagues. However, there are exceptions to this rule - Channel One has exclusive rights to broadcast the finals of some competitions in Russia. This concerns, for example, men's football, men's and women's volleyball, tennis tournaments, weightlifting, individual championship in rhythmic gymnastics, etc. But the VGTRK on its channel "Russia 2" will start the Olympic broadcasts first - this will happen two days before the official opening games when the women's soccer competition begins. The opening ceremony will be shown by Channel One, and the closing ceremony by the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company.
On the channel "Russia 2" from July 27, the Olympic information channel will begin at 11 o'clock Moscow time and run almost without a break until three o'clock in the morning. Channel One plans to broadcast the competition live for at least three hours every day. However, the adopted scheme of dividing the screenings of competitions between the two state TV companies has a feature that is inconvenient for viewers. It does not allow companies to draw up a program schedule for a specific day even in a few days.
In addition to these two TV companies, it will broadcast the Olympics on all its channels and NTV. But viewers of the public NTV channel will only be able to see Olympic news and competition reviews. Live broadcasts from London, supplemented by the company's traditional “analytical gatherings”, will occupy almost all the airtime of six paid NTV channels.
In addition to three domestic TV companies, two European channels in Russian, Eurosport and Eurosport 2, will also broadcast live.
