Sunday evening was a global whirlwind of conversation about the opening edition of the Enhanced Games – which turned out to be mostly an infomercial parading as a sporting spectacle.
There was an immense amount of conversation had about the Games, much of it critical of principle and performance and structure, and some supportive of the ideas as well.
I don’t think I have much interesting to say that hasn’t been said about all of those things.
But the one part of this that is stuck in my craw is the repeated crowing about the money that athletes were paid, and how that proved the moral superiority of the Enhanced Games.
Where that misses the point is that the Enhanced Games didn’t actually solve the financial problems that plague sports like swimming, track & field, and weightlifting.
What I mean is this: while the billionaires and large capital funds backing the event were generous in a sense in their donations to athletes who submitted to the experiment, on the outside there is no way that the Games as a standalone product were profitable. Between the huge marketing costs, venue construction, the training camp in Abu Dhabi, staff, and everything else that went into the Games, whatever sponsorships were sold or ticket revenue was present from an often-meager crowd or YouTube streaming revenue was earned from the event seems unlikely to have even come close to covering the costs of staging the event.
At this point, I assume most of our readers understand that the Games themselves were not designed to be profitable, but instead as a high visibility marketing product for ‘the Protocol,’ which the founders hope will generate billions of dollars of revenue for the company.
But that also means that Cody Miller leaving with $500,000 or Hunter Armstrong leaving with $375,000 doesn’t actually mean that they have cracked the code.
So setting aside the fact that the repeated pitch of ‘removing financial stress from athletes helps them perform at their best’ didn’t really bare itself out (it’s not clear that they did), the Enhanced Games didn’t prove anything about a better way to do Olympic sports.
They didn’t prove that paying past-their-prime athletes millions of dollars is sustainable for the IOC or World Aquatics or USA Swimming. They didn’t create any novel presentation or format (6 hour swim meets are the problem, not the solution). There are no takeaways for anybody in the hallowed halls to even say ‘we hate the doping but they did do this really cool pre-race thing, we should steal that idea.’ No silver linings to the sideshow.
What they did, essentially, was donate a bunch of money to the athletes to try and force a point and grab a moral high ground. Peter Thiel could’ve written $250,000 checks to each Olympic gold medalist too. He just chose to do it for Enhanced Games winners instead.
I’m happy for what that money means to the athletes and their families. Truly. Another million dollars for Kristian Gkolomeev is a life changing sum.
But it is not a sport-changing sum because it is not analogous. It’s like saying “Apple made $100 billion last year, why can’t USA Swimming pay their athletes more?”
They’re not actually in the same business.
And so the one part of the Enhanced Games that actually could have enhanced the sport of swimming has fallen flat. The conversation hasn’t changed about what swimming needs to do in order to have more commercial success. We need to find more exciting formats, athletes need to be more accessible and marketable, the powers that be need to sell more ads, and around that circle it goes in time until one day (hopefully) the sport finds a way to pay athletes more.
It was a small handful of events and a small handful of athletes and did not, in itself, create a pathway for sustained or widespread financial success.
While the Enhanced Games pushed itself as the solution to all of the financial shortcomings of these Olympic sports, the Enhanced Games don’t actually care if pro swimmers make more money. That’s where this event differs from the International Swimming League, another event bankrolled by a controversial billionaire that was wildly unsustainable. In the case of the ISL, I truly believe that Konstantin Grigorishin wanted to create a pathway for pro swimmers to make more money.
But paying 30-something swimmers gobs of money to swim times that are not particularly fast across a brutal 6 hour format didn’t prove anything. It didn’t prove that the protocols work, it didn’t prove that the sports had been revolutionized, it didn’t prove that swimmers should be paid more than they are.
So above all things, that’s what I really hated about last night. The needle hasn’t moved one bit on the ‘real’ side of this conversation, but the conversation has been dumbed down to “the Enhanced Games can do it so you should too.”
You might be able to make some money by shorting the stock. (Betting that the stock will drop in value)
In the end,they were just a blip. The weather news is and will be so much more. Rain coats and umbrellas perpetuate more spending than these games ever will.
What I also find interesting is that mainstream media was not interested in this at all. Saw one link at ESPN, buried on their homepage on Saturday. Saw a similar one link buried on either NBC News or ABC News, but not both, on Friday. SwimSwam is the place where I saw the most coverage of this.
Yeah but how often are those other places covering weightlifting, track or swimming competitions otherwise?
Honestly maybe Hooper or Thor have been mentioned for winning WSM or the deadlift record, otherwise those sports are not getting mentioned.
We are trying to force a round peg in a square hole across the board.
USA Swimming could use those big salary dollars to think through changes to garner more interest in the sport…more interest brings more coverage…move coverage brings more endorsement dollars. Changes would be need to be made, difficult discussions about the rising % of international swimmers taking NCAA spots would need to be addressed. And yes, I know USA swimming and NCAA are two separate entities…that’s why I described the discussions as difficult. I honestly have no idea what USA Swimming leadership is doing for this sport but we are watching our main Team USA training pipeline (NCAA) become the training pipeline for other countries. Most… Read more »
Maybe the way to actually pay athletes properly is to sell a product to make that dream feasible. The money has to come from somewhere. Products that give value to people that then creates money for the athletes, in this case lumps of money. Value exchange. Doesn’t come out of thin air. Makes sense to me. Happy that they can finally support themselves well.
Swimming/track doesn’t have the same appeal as NBA/NFL. If we hope for them to actually make money to support themselves/family we need to do something different. EG is an idea that different. To me it’s a step in the right direction.
Apologies if I’ve missed previous discussions on this, but the EG is entirely about bio-hacking, which has been a SV obsession for quite some time – see “microdosing” for innovative product development or red blood cell infusions from young donors. Exhibit A: the Bezos mutation. EG is a lab and the subjects are the athletes. It’s sad but it’s just getting started.
Yes, Braden is aware of that. That’s what he means by, “At this point, I assume most of our readers understand that the Games themselves were not designed to be profitable, but instead as a high visibility marketing product for ‘the Protocol,’ “
He’s just addressing here the claims that paying swimmers these huge amounts of money was the better way to do things. But as we saw demonstrated, that didn’t really produce a better competition, or tv product.
Not that USA Swimming doesn’t need to find a better way, and find ways to pay the athletes more. They definitely do. But USA Swimming is not Peter Thiel. And Thiel clearly has no intention of actually supporting Olympic Athletes.… Read more »
I’m a 30 something swimmer who swims times that aren’t particularly fast for free! Take that, Enhanced Games! 🙂
What are the financials for the Olympics? How much revenue does it generate from tickets, sponsorships/tv ads, TV rights, etc.? Also, how much is the profit?
Is there a way for Olympic athletes to unionize and do a CBA like in other pro sports?
To your last question, no. Too many jurisdictions. That’s why ISL didn’t use the word “union,” though there are other softer mechanisms that could be used.
To your first question, there is no profit. Could the IOC trim operations and find money for athletes? Idk, maybe, that’s a complicated question, the Olympics are already pretty dependent on host countries and/or cities dumping money into them.
363 athletes won gold medals in Paris. With multi medalists, you’re looking at around 425 gold medals that need bonuses. Giving each of them $250k is $106 million. Then you’ve gotta double it to match the 2-3-4 payouts.
So you’re talking about a $200 million program.
There’s a couple questions in play here.… Read more »
Also how would an Olympic athlete union even hypothetically work.
You’re an active Olympian for like 2 months from trials to competition then you have to go away for 4 years then come prove it again.
Braden, what are your thoughts on what Ron replied to you? I just find it hard to believe a club coach can be in support of this