Olympic bosses clamp down on Periscope users live-streaming Rio 2016 footage
Rio 2016 organisers have taken issue with Periscope users live-streaming Olympic footage, reportedly pulling broadcasts from Twitter.
The IOC has taken issue with Periscope live streams from the Games / Pixabay
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is said to be cracking down on Periscope users, with TorrentFreak reporting that it is going all out to prevent people from streaming the Olympics without its permission.
Live-streaming has become much more popular at sporting events thanks to the advent of Twitter-owned Periscope and Facebook Live, and the IOC apparently sees real-time streams as a legitimate threat to the billions of dollars it generates from official broadcast partners.
In response, the IOC issued over 1000 takedown requests to Periscope for posting infringing Rio footage. The figures come from the Lumen database, in which Periscope is the only live-streaming service to share its takedown notices publicly; meaning that it's not unlikely that Facebook Live has received some similar notices.
A cursory Twitter search for Periscope Rio 2016 streams shows several dead feeds.
The IOC is notoriously vigilant when it comes to protecting the Olympic brand. When Rio 2016 kicked off, it banned unofficial media from posting GIFs from the games.
Twitter has been investing more in Periscope of late, attempting to position itself as the go-to social broadcaster through live TV-style programming.