YouTube Launches Expansive Winter Olympics Hub

The 2014 Winter Olympics are less than a month away, and YouTube has revealed the platform through which it will provide expansive coverage of the Games. The top video sharing site has debuted its Team USA hub, which will provide behind-the-scenes news and features on the American athletes who will travel to Sochi, Russia to compete with the world’s best.

As noted in a report by Adweek, YouTube can’t show actual footage and highlights from the Olympics, since NBC has all of the broadcast rights locked up and will utilize its own online hub for live event coverage. Therefore, it is going for the next best thing: The sort of human interest stories that give Americans a reason to watch sports like curling and luge that would otherwise never cross our radars. Here’s the second episode of one of the hub’s first web series, which follows alpine skier Ted Ligety

as he prepares for his assault on the Russian slopes.

YouTube has teamed up with the United States Olympic Committee and brand partner Liberty Mutual Insurance for the endeavor, and will continue to roll out new content up to and through the 2014 Winter Games, which begin on February 7th. By the time the competition begins, you should have plenty of a rooting interest in moguls and speed skating and skeleton; if not, YouTube has failed you.