Nine turn up the volume to meet expectations of Paris Olympics coverage

Within a week of the deal being inked, Sparke and director of sport, Brent Williams, were on a plane to Italy for an International Olympic Committee broadcaster's briefing on the Milan Winter Olympics in 2026. But for the Nine honchos, their main focus was catching up on Paris 2024.

"We were actually, by all accounts, a year late on planning," Sparke says. "Normally you have two years to plan these things.

"Even the Olympics recognised that and when we went over for the broadcaster's briefing it was for the Milan Winter Olympics, but we had to go there and establish relationships and get ourselves up to speed for Paris."

Less than 18 months later and the Paris Olympics are officially ready to launch tomorrow with a bold opening ceremony on the River Seine.

Nine is offering the biggest Olympics coverage Australia has ever seen. More than 5000 hours of live sport and all 329 events will be available across terrestrial channels Nine and 9Gem, free streaming platform 9Now and on 40 new channels on subscription streaming service Stan.

Sparke has worked at Nine since 1988 and covered the 1992 Albertville and 1994 Lillehammer Winter Olympics, the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur and the 2012 London Olympics.

The exponential improvement in technology and internet speed over the past decade has turbocharged a sports viewer's expectations. Sparke says Nine plans to exceed those demands.

"The requirement nowadays is more volume," he says. "When we went to London we presented one channel 20 hours a day.

"Nowadays the expectation is everyone wants to be able to see anything and everything whenever they can."

When we speak with Sparke its the day after NSW's victory over Queensland in the State Of Origin decider in what some people have described as the most intense game of rugby league ever played.

Nine had exclusive live rights to the Origin game, which attracted an audience of 3.65 million. Of that viewership, 864,000 watched via broadcast video on demand through 9Now, an increase of 83 per cent from the year before.

In an age where commercial TV stations face increasing pressure to attract advertising revenue as audiences continue to fragment due to streaming services, live sport has become vital.

The days of people stopping at the water cooler to discuss last night's TV shows are almost over.

However, State Of Origin proved massive audiences will still tune in together if the event is important enough.

Sparke says the Olympics, and in particular, Australia's gold-medal moments can excite mass audiences too.

"It's certainly a shot in the arm for people," he says. "It's quite a big spectacular event and our business is treating it like that.

"People who work here are actually very excited to be a part of something like that.

"It's a world event. There's eight billion on Earth and this is the sporting event that sorts out the men from the boys.

"It is the pinnacle. People love to be a part of that stuff."

During the Olympics Sparke will remain in Nine's Sydney studio, but the network is sending more than 200 people to Paris, including 18 from Nine News, 18 from radio and 18 from their newspaper mastheads to cover the Olympic Games.