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Shortly after winning gold at the Paris Olympics, American wrestler Sarah Hildebrandt let the world know her thoughts:
“OMG I just won this shocking Olympics hahahaha man,” she wrote on social media at the event.
The post might seem like something athletes would do on a regular basis. But it’s part of a new twist at the Olympics — and one of the keys to restoring the sense of shared national experience that marked previous Games.
For more than a decade, the Olympics have seemed to struggle to capture the attention they did a generation ago, with blame placed on a fractured media landscape and a host of negative factors (COVID restrictions in Tokyo, time zone issues in Beijing, the Zika outbreak in Rio de Janeiro, geopolitical tensions in Sochi, Russia).
But the reason may be simpler: Social media has been largely absent from coverage of the Olympics. The intellectual property rights to the Olympic rings are strictly protected, meaning Olympic videos can only be released in limited ways, with broadcasters worried they would fall foul of strict rules or that their broadcasts would be cannibalized.
New, looser social media rules for athletes announced before the Paris Olympics, a rethink by broadcasters — and the ability for social media companies to geo-fence certain content — seemed to change just about everything.
The audience also cheered.
Apolo Ohno, an eight-time Olympic medalist in short track speed skating, said athletes can now “build their own personality just like any influencer. It’s different than it was before.”
These rich posts have fueled Olympic memes and TikTok trends, making people feel that the Olympics are everywhere.. South Korean pistol shooter Kim Ye-ji went viral for her cool composure. Norwegian swimmer Henrik Christiansen introduced the world to the chocolate muffins of the Olympic Village. American gymnast Sunisa Lee used a TikTok trend to laugh at her tragic fall off the balance beam: “Unfortunately, I was selected for the Olympics,” she wrote.
The posts appear to be having an effect. NBCUniversal, which has U.S. rights to the Olympics, said viewership for the Olympics on its Peacock streaming platform and traditional TV was 77% higher than for the Tokyo Games. In the company’s internal research of new Olympics viewers, 36% said they tuned in after watching a clip of the events on social media.
The strict social media restrictions are designed to protect the big bucks. Television rights fees have been the IOC’s biggest revenue source since the 1980s, and the organization goes to almost any lengths to protect its partner broadcasters and official sponsors.
Athletes live-streaming during the Olympics could threaten the value of broadcast rights that cost billions of dollars to purchase. If athletes intentionally or unintentionally establish relationships with brands that haven’t paid millions of dollars to become official Olympic sponsors, they could infringe on those sponsors’ exclusivity. As a result, the IOC has imposed strict rules on social media.
This creates a dilemma for athletes. At the 2012 London Olympics, a group of American track and field athletes staged a protest against a rule that prohibited them from mentioning their personal sponsors during the “blackout” period during the Olympics. Superstar swimmer Michael Phelps found himself in the middle of controversy when a photo of him with Louis Vuitton, which was not an Olympic sponsor, was leaked ahead of time.
“It was an impossible situation,” Phelps’ agent, Peter Carlisle of the sports agency Octagon, said of the restrictive rules on social media. “So at some point, the pressure just got too much.”
Under the more relaxed rules, athletes can post videos from Olympic-sanctioned events. (There are still some restrictions: No live streaming, and videos can be no longer than two minutes.) That has unlocked a wealth of content that might not have existed otherwise, like Simone Biles’ take on TikTok’s hit “Get Ready with Me” trend, which she filmed before winning the gold medal in the rhythmic gymnastics individual all-around final.
Today’s athletes may be particularly well-suited to take advantage of the new flexibility afforded by social media. “They are the first digital, social, native-born competitors and athletes in the Olympics,” said Elizabeth Lindsey, president of Wasserman, a sports and entertainment marketing agency.
Broadcasters were not angry. They turned to social media as a tool to promote the Olympics rather than seeing it as a threat to prime-time ratings.
Jennifer Storms, chief marketing officer for NBCUniversal entertainment and sports, told The New York Times that the network “completely changed its social strategy” for the Paris Olympics, launching live highlights and longer-form exclusive videos on streaming and traditional TV. It has drawn in a host of celebrities, including Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart, and a host of content creators.
According to NBC, the number of viewership of videos shared through NBC Sports social accounts increased by 432% compared to the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
“What we’re seeing is 17 days of intense time where the Olympics are creating and dominating the cultural conversation,” Storms said. “The athletes and their ability to have more opportunities to post during the Olympics is only going to exacerbate that conversation.”
With the next Summer Olympics set to be held in Los Angeles, the unofficial content capital of the United States, executives, athletes and others say they expect an even bigger boost from social media.
The IOC “will look back and say, ‘OK, what are we doing to prepare for the 2028 Games? What are our takeaways? How badly are our sponsors complaining about the athletes’ social media? How badly are our broadcast partners complaining?'” said Rick Burton, a professor of sports management at Syracuse University. “But so far, my view is that everything is going well, or as well as the IOC could have hoped.”
This article was originally published on The New York Times.
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