A shift in the media business is changing what it is to be a sports fan

The first television broadcast of an Olympic games was in 1936, when around 160,000 people within transmitting range of the stadium in Berlin were able to tune in. The action was shot on three cameras, only one of which could capture live footage—and only when the sun was out. At the next summer games, in London in 1948, the BBC suggested that perhaps it should pay the organisers for the right to broadcast the event, and offered 1,000 guineas (about $40,000 at today’s prices). The Olympic committee sportingly said there was no need.

Today things are a little different. The 33rd summer Olympics, which begin in Paris on July 26th, will be crawled over by cameras transmitting thousands of hours of coverage to an audience of more than 3bn—nearly half the world’s population. The organisers will charge media companies some $3.3bn for the right to broadcast the action, contributing the biggest single part of the games’ income and making the event perhaps the most valuable fortnight of entertainment in history.