Things To Do In The Olympic Park: Watch The Big Screens

M@
By M@ Last edited 139 months ago
Things To Do In The Olympic Park: Watch The Big Screens


It's a fairly obvious tip, but make sure you get round to viewing the giant screens towards the northern end of the Park. Known as Park Live, this pair of displays bestilts from one of the Park's water channels, offering views of the action from both banks. Other than streaming over the internet or being in a stadium, this is the only way to keep up with the Games from inside the park.

Given that some 200,000 people can be milling about the Olympic Park at any time, the viewing areas around the screens have the potential to get rather busy. But while the prime spots are always occupied, we've managed to find a good vantage point on every visit. Our tip would be to head for the wooden stepped area on the west bank (just down hill from the Riverbank Arena). The view is somewhat oblique (see above), but certainly good enough to enjoy the action. A mobile beer seller is also permanently stationed in this area, making it particularly attractive to boozy folk like us.

The east bank offers the best raised views, but an oddly placed plantation of trees gets in the way from some angles. Consequently, some visitors will reclaim unobstructed hill space not intended for spectators, trampling the flower beds in the process.


The screens are sponsored by British Airways, but the branding's not over-the-top. The sport occasionally cuts away for a BA advert, but it is only occasional, and the advert happens to be rather spectacular (at least the first time you see it). If you tweet a message of support for our athletes and append it with #homeadvantage, your tweet might well appear along the bottom of the Park Live screen. It'll also contribute to BA's "social symphony", whereby they transform Homeadvantage twitter traffic into a sound wave. Cool stuff, though the symphony sounds a little bit polished to be a direct mapping.

Other Things To Do In The Olympic Park

  1. Find the Fact Benches
  2. Bait Jake Humphrey
  3. See the phone box art
  4. Try the food

Last Updated 08 August 2012