Because the 2024 Paris Olympics kick off this weekend, the cloud left by the 2020 Tokyo Video games’ viewership flop nonetheless casts a shadow. Headlines declaring the demise of the Olympics have develop into a quadrennial custom, with critics citing overspending and corruption as elements with historically low viewership as a nail within the Olympic coffin.
However are the Video games actually on life assist, or are we merely measuring their vitality with outdated metrics?
Let’s rewind to 2021. The pandemic-delayed Tokyo Olympics noticed stay tv and web viewership drop to three.05 billion folks worldwide, a 5% lower from Rio 2016 and a 15% drop from London 2012. Not good. However whereas these numbers don’t lie, they will actually mislead. And a few extra context paints an image not of extinction, however of evolution.
Whereas conventional TV viewership declined, digital engagement soared. Tokyo Olympics highlights and digital clips racked up 28 billion on-line views. For context, that’s greater than double Rio’s 11.6 billion and worlds past London’s 1.9 billion.
This seismic shift in consumption habits isn’t distinctive to the Olympics. It displays broader traits throughout media and sports activities leisure.
Immediately’s sports activities followers, significantly youthful demographics, favor on-demand viewing to appointment tv and snackable highlights on social media to hours-long stay broadcasts. These mobile-friendly habits are reshaping not simply how followers devour sports activities, however how they interact with them.
Catering to on-line eyeballs
The Worldwide Olympic Committee (IOC) isn’t blind to this shift. Their current launch of the “Sport. And Greater than Sport.” model platform, which focuses on the tales behind the video games, is a transparent try to focus on a youthful viewers for the 2024 Olympics. Collaborations like Group USA and NBC’s Roblox partnership and types’ heavy investment in social media activations additional that narrative.
However the IOC’s technique goes past advertising and marketing. The very cloth of the Olympics is being rewoven to attraction to a brand new technology. Of the 329 occasions throughout 32 sports activities in Paris, a number of which can be both debuting or returning after premiering in Tokyo are clearly skewed towards youthful audiences. Skateboarding, browsing, and even breakdancing are actually Olympic occasions, reflecting a recognition that the Video games should evolve to stay related. The IOC’s hand is additional revealed by its recent announcement that it’ll host the inaugural Olympic Esports Video games in Saudi Arabia in 2025.
Regardless of the hand-wringing over viewership, the 2024 Olympics stay a profitable proposition for advertisers. NBCUniversal has already set a brand new advert income file for Paris 2024, securing $1.2 billion in commitments, with over $350 million from new advertisers. This inflow of contemporary advert capital means that manufacturers nonetheless see worth within the Olympic platform, even because it evolves.
The New TV Technique
It’s additionally a reminder that, whereas viewer engagement is altering, TV in the mean time stays the richest vein within the sports activities gold mine. Greater than 60% of the IOC’s income comes from broadcast rights, and the group might be finding out fastidiously what’s occurring with the NFL. That league seems hell-bent on proudly owning each possible primetime window and having a presence on as many streaming platforms as doable.
To look at each common season NFL recreation, you need access to NBC, CBS, Fox, ABC, Sunday Ticket, NFL Community, ESPN, ESPN+, Peacock, Amazon Prime, and Netflix. A ache for hardcore followers, however extremely profitable for the league. Every community is on the hook for wherever between $1 billion (Amazon) and $2.7 billion (Disney/ESPN) yearly with Netflix anticipated to pay $150 million for every of the Christmas Day video games on its slate. In whole, the 11-year deal is predicted to carry the NFL $110 billion in income.
It’s the most effective instance of the panorama turning into extra fragmented, as totally different suppliers maintain rights to particular recreation slots. However the NFL has proved that, with the suitable product, leagues can reap the benefits of this development. As we glance towards Paris and past, it’s clear that the way in which we measure Olympic success must evolve. The uncooked numbers from Tokyo—3.05 billion stay viewers with 28 billion digital views—inform a narrative not of decline, however of transformation. We’re witnessing a shift from passive consumption to energetic engagement and from appointment viewing to on-demand interplay. So to declare the Video games dying based mostly on conventional TV scores alone misses the complete image.