For Olympic purists, the notion of handing out gold medals for skateboarding or breakdancing might look like a gimmick. But for the International Olympic Committee and some of its long-standing commercial partners, these new sports are becoming useful tools as they try to connect with a younger audience.
Thomas Bach, IOC president, has repeatedly declared urban sports to be the future of the Games. “Sport must go where the people are, whether in the real world or in the virtual world,” he said at an event earlier this year. “These city sports are therefore very important for the long-term development of the Olympic Games.”
The IOC brought a handful of new events into its programme in Tokyo: sport climbing, BMX freestyle and skateboarding. In Paris next week, breaking — more widely known as breakdancing — will join them.
As executives across global sport grapple with changing tastes, the IOC hopes the cultural cachet of these new sports and the athletes who participate in them can bring a more youthful following to the Olympic Games and help address concerns about waning relevance.
“These sports add something very new, and it’s something highly valuable, which is new, young audiences,” said Kit McConnell, sports director of the IOC. “As we increasingly move from the linear generation to the digital generation, these athletes and their followers live in that space. So adding them to the Olympic programme has allowed us to create real connections with these communities around the world.”
Those athletes include the likes of Brazil’s Rayssa Leal, who became a viral skateboarding sensation aged 7, when a grainy mobile phone video of her landing a heel-flip while dressed in a fairy costume was shared on social media by Tony Hawk, the most famous skater in history. But little prepared her for the deluge of fame that would come at the Tokyo Olympics, where, at age 13, she won a silver medal in women’s street skateboarding.
After 6.4mn people followed her account on Instagram, Leal began attracting blue-chip sponsors including Louis Vuitton, Samsung, Snickers, and Banco do Brasil. Leal will compete in Paris as a defending medallist aged just 16, and in recent years has turned to a sports psychologist to help her manage the abrupt changes. “I’m still super young, and everything happened very fast in my life,” she said last year.
British skateboarder Sky Brown, 16, has also been racking up endorsements since winning bronze in Tokyo when she was 13. Even before winning a medal, Brown had caught the eye of Nike, but after Tokyo she gained a TikTok following of more than 2mn, and bagged deals with watch brand Tag Heuer, Korean electronics brand Samsung and payments company Visa, which has been an Olympic sponsor for more than 40 years.
“We have supported new disciplines as they have been added to the roster, recognising that they bring additional athletes, excitement and inclusivity to the Olympic and Paralympic Games,” said Kim Kadlec, chief marketing officer at Visa Europe.
Even the newest sport is attracting corporate interest. Top Japanese breaker b-boy Shigekix has a long list of endorsements, including German carmaker Mercedes, Kosé cosmetics and G-Shock watches. He recently became the face of an ad campaign aimed at convincing young Japanese to buy life insurance.
Despite not qualifying for the Games, members of the British Olympic breaking team have been deployed as brand ambassadors for Eurostar, and attracted individual tie-ups with the likes of Samsung, Nike and Google Pixel.
“It’s the most money I’ve made from breaking ever — these last two years”, said b-boy Sunni, who recently appeared in a commercial for sandwich chain Subway. “That short influx of money is not life changing, but it’s good.”
Andy Anson, chief executive of the British Olympic Association, said the addition of urban sports has made it easier to show commercial partners that the Olympics is still a “very valuable property”. Team GB recently signed tie-ups with TikTok and radio group Global.
“We’ve got to make sure that the Olympics are as relevant now as they ever were to young people,” he said. “Coming out of Tokyo — the skateboarding, the BMX park, the climbing — those sports definitely resonated with younger audiences. We are seeing the benefit of that. It’s not just that these sports are fun. The athletes they produce are fun.”
Earlier this year, the IOC sought to capitalise on the recent interest in these urban sports by packaging them together through its Olympic Qualifier Series — a two-stage event spread across Shanghai and Budapest at which qualifying spots for Paris were up for grabs. More than 100,000 attended the two festival-like showcases, thanks in part to financial support offered by host governments that enabled free entry.
The IOC hopes to use the lessons from that experience to build interest in the qualification process, and so create additional “touchpoints” for its sponsors throughout the four-year Olympic cycle.
“For our partners, there’s been a great response about them being able to associate with these events and the sports and athletes within them,” said McConnell.
Ricardo Fort, an independent consultant who previously ran global sponsorship at both Visa and Coca-Cola, said that many big sponsors were unlikely to worry about mass youth appeal, and that household names such as Simone Biles and LeBron James would still be by far the most important drivers of audience interest. But for some consumer brands, the pull of reaching into young online communities would hold genuine appeal.
“No sponsor would terminate their contract or not renew their contract tomorrow if the urban sports disappeared,” he said. “At the same time, every sponsor welcomes the addition of urban sports as an evolution of what the Games can offer. It’s a different audience. And even if they are not as large as some of the more familiar sports, actually it adds up.”
Additional reporting by Sara Germano
