In the era of media platformization and intensive commodification, mega-sports events like the Olympic Games have transitioned from universally shared public spectacles to scarce, market-driven media commodities, challenging cultural citizenship. In Taiwan, this structural shift is marked by the decline of free-to-air terrestrial television (dropping below 10% viewership by 2025) and the rising dominance of ELTA which functions as Taiwan's Olympic rights intermediary, licensing content to free-to-air television and digital platforms.
This study asks: How do transnational private legal orders, commercial platform capital, and domestic regulatory frameworks interactively reconfigure the media rights network, and how does this transformation impact public access? Applying Manuel Puppis’s media governance framework, this paper conducts a policy analysis of regulatory decisions, telecom acts, and specific industrial cases, including the 2008 Chunghwa Telecom equity withdrawal and 2024 Paris Olympics ad-hoc subsidy arrangements. Tracing Taiwan’s evolution across three phases, the findings reveal a profound paradigm failure in traditional media laws. While the International Olympic Committee (IOC) mandates maximum coverage, shifting its regional agency from Dentsu to Infront for 2026–2032, domestic regulators face a jurisdictional vacuum over OTT platforms. Consequently, universal access heavily relies on temporary state subsidies to buy back sub-licensing arrangements from ELTA's commercial paywall.
The paper theorizes how extra-national private contracts strip sovereign states of regulatory efficacy and outlines a tripartite pathway—comprising statutory "major events lists", regional joint-pooling, and public-private co-regulation—to safeguard public interest within a platform society.

Authors:
Huei-Wen Chen, Chengchi University, Taiwan

About the Presenter(s)
Ms. Huei-Wen Chen is currently a doctoral student at the college of Communication, Chengchi University, Taiwan, R.O.C.

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