🏟️ FROM THE TRACK TO TIKTOK

Have you heard of Ilona Maher? She’s a rugby player for Team USA who first came to attention on TikTok at the 2020 Tokyo Games. Now she’s back for Paris 2024, sharing everything from the cardboard beds in the Olympic Village, her first meeting with Snoop and more personal topics like body image. She has 1.9M followers on TikTok (2M on Instagram), and is, without a doubt, the best way to experience the Olympic Games. Don’t take our word for it: many of Maher’s TikToks have millions of views. Closer to home, Singaporean swimmer Quah Jing Wen is also a FYP mainstay. Is Paris 2024 shaping up to be the first real social Olympics? And why?

💡 OUR TAKE

Yes, TikTok existed during Tokyo 2020 but this time more athletes are posting behind-the-scenes snippets. Beyond Maher and Quah, Norwegian swimmer Henrik Christiansen has been winning hearts with content related to chocolate muffins while Australian water polo player Tilly Kearns used her channel to encapsulate the real spirit of the Games (racking up 11.4M views). More conventional TikTok tropes like haul videos have also proved a hit. The common thread amongst all this content?  It’s authentic, relatable and joyful, and crucially, unfiltered, giving direct insight into the life of an Olympic athlete. 

Age helps: most of these athletes are under 30 so they’re just doing what comes naturally. But they are also savvy enough to know that posting on TikTok can bring recognition to lesser-known sports and could help cultivate a personal brand that lasts beyond the track (hello pommel horse). Ilona Maher, for example, recently launched Medalist, a skincare brand ‘by elite female athletes, for female athletes everywhere’. 

Athlete-created content isn’t the only social aspect to Paris 2024. Realizing that many young people are looking for sports content on social media, some the biggest networks have sent creators to cover the games alongside regular anchors, hoping to appeal to the 75% of US viewers aged 15 to 45 who say they are more likely to watch coverage from celebrities, influencers and digital creators than in Tokyo 2020.

NBCUniversal partnered with Meta, Overtime, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube on the ‘Paris Creator Collective’ and is mixing up the format with daily TikTok Live shows. Call Her Daddy podcast host Alex Cooper joined the NBC broadcast team in April, with the network hoping her watch parties would be a hit amongst the show’s predominantly female audience.

This strategy goes beyond more content on more channels. It allows fans to share cultural moments with their favorite creator(s), and that appeals to younger audiences: 66% of Gen Z Americans agree that they often spend more time watching content that discusses or unpacks something than the thing itself. Creators are bringing the Olympics to their existing fanbase and finding a new audience: Cooper’s interview with Simone Biles was also shown on the NBC Primetime and The Today Show.

So, the Olympics are more social than ever. But what does that mean?

🥇 Athletes are using TikTok to organically build their personal brand and in the process turning Gen Z viewers – who are somewhat ambivalent about the Olympics – into genuine fans. This could be commercialized via brand partnerships, sponsorship opportunities or branded content, particularly if athletes are allowed creative control. Emphasizing the human-interest component will be key.

🥈 TikTok is a key driver of interest in sport. We’ve previously discussed how it contributed to the explosion of female fans watching F1. TikTok micro trends like tenniscore 🎾 have crossed over to the mainstream (helped by Zendaya’s movie Challengers). It’s a myth that ‘Gen Z aren’t into sports’. They’re just interested in watching and consuming events in a way that makes sense to them (highlights clips and creator-led interactions for starters) and seek sports-related content that’s fun, unique and relatable. 

🥉 Culture has become increasingly fragmented, and very few events have the same global impact of the Olympics. But although the appeal is widespread, the in-road is very personal. Yesterday’s winners followed conventional strategies. Tomorrow’s champions are attuned to new consumption habits and will work with creators or enter new channels to build cultural moments that resonate with viewers on a deeper level and turn casual views into long-term fans.

For those of you born before 1997, ‘fax, no printer‘ is Gen Z speak for ‘undeniable facts I agree with’

Scroll to the end of the newsletter for the correct answer!