Michael Phelps will be back to call swimming at the Paris Games, NBC announced Friday, in maybe the least-unexpected pre-Paris Games news ever, and good for Michael.
Disclosure: 16 years ago, after his eight-for-eight at the Beijing Games, I worked with Michael on writing his best-selling book, No Limits. Here is to nothing but success and, more importantly, joy and sweetness for Michael, Nicole and their four boys.
In Tokyo three years ago, I had a perch in the row behind Michael, Dan Hicks, Rowdy Gaines and Elisabeth Beisel, and – department of the obvious – Michael 1/ is a star, 2/ knows swimming and 3/ isn’t afraid to say what’s on his mind. That’s a recipe for good TV.
Now, to the matter of the moment: is Michael going to draw 18-to-34-year-olds?
Or does he reinforce an audience that’s already there?
Michael Phelps on Friday at the U.S. swim Trials in Indianapolis // Getty Images
The Olympics need, more than anything, to be relevant. They need to matter. The people they need to matter most with, the key demographic, are 18-to-34-year-olds.
Just a bit of hopefully helpful context in understanding who we are talking about:
Someone now 18 was born in 2006. For them, 9/11 is not a lived-through trauma but a historical marker. The first iPhone, 2007, was still a year away.
At the outer edge of this demographic band: when Michael swam to greatness in 2008, someone now 34 was – 18.
Framed another way:
Michael’s run in Beijing, when he won the 100 butterfly by one-hundredth of a second, when Jason Lezak saved the U.S. bacon in the men’s 4x100 free relay – someone now 18 was 2.
Michael Phelps has 28 Olympic medals, 23 gold. Ask someone to name an American Olympian, and almost surely, the first name that comes out is Phelps. Maybe Simone Biles. But probably Phelps.
But why should someone who was 2 back in the day flip past Netflix for … swimming?
To reiterate, the Olympics have to matter. In today’s world, globally, only two sports matter: soccer and basketball. (In the United States, football, especially the NFL.)
What’s going to make teens and 20-somethings decide, I want to watch the Olympics?
It’s not the winter of 1980, when the United States beat the Soviets in hockey amid a raging Cold War.
It’s 12 years since the high-water mark of 2012 – the London Games, when NBC averaged 31.1 million viewers across 17 nights of taped coverage.
The Rio 2016 number: 26.7 million.
The 2021 Tokyo Games: 15.5 million.
In nine years (London to Tokyo), the audience shrank by more than half.
—
One can argue, and it may be the case, that the Tokyo numbers were down significantly because of the pandemic or the time zone or difficulties in finding where to watch what.
But the numbers are the numbers.
Another set of numbers: 3.5 billion people around the world took in London 2012 on TV compared to 3 billion for Tokyo. In nine years, down 14%.
One of the IOC’s top-tier sponsors, Toyota, has already announced it is leaving after Paris. At least two more are expected to go, too.
This is why so many people who love the Olympics are worried – and why they are betting that Paris, like London a “good” time zone, with the Eiffel Tower and so much more captivating scenery, will be a favorable TV draw.
What, though, do younger Americans know about France?
Les poissons, les poissons, hee-hee-hee, ho-ho-ho – from the Little Mermaid. OK, what else?
—
Last Sunday, we had a family barbecue for Father’s Day. My youngest brother also lives in LA. He and his wife have three children: twin 22-year-old daughters, both of whom graduated weeks before from Columbia, and a 16-year-old son, who two days before got his first California driver’s license and, in the fall, will be a high school junior. We have three adult children; the two girls now live out of town; our 27-year-old son lives near us, and was only too glad, as always, for free food; he brought his charming 24-year-old girlfriend.
Here is your demographic. A ready-made focus group.
To say that this crew doesn’t care about ‘sports’ would be underselling the lack of interest.
The twins are super-smart. One was a Rhodes finalist. The other won a Fulbright and is off in a few weeks to the Baltics. The Rhodes one was asking after something she had been told about how USC is now in a new sports league, the ‘Ten something,’ and how some of the other teams in it are Michigan, Nebraska and whoever – this having dinner in a house where there’s a picture of the 1996 Rose Bowl game hanging on the wall and grown up amid an extended family that counts both paternal grandparents, two of her uncles (me, another brother) and two cousins (both our now out-of-town girls) as Northwestern alums. Go Cats!
So … this crew is a/ an amazing focus group because they know nothing, literally nothing, about sports or b/ not amazing because they know, like, nothing. Your choice.
If the argument goes that it was the Soviets in 1980 and it’s the Chinese now – the case of the 23 Chinese swimmers – and Americans need a villain to root against … this group knew nothing, completely nothing, about this saga. When I explained what it was about, they shrugged. So what?
If another argument is that everyone knows it’s dangerous to extrapolate from anecdotal information and we need hard metrics — sure.
—
When, they asked, are you leaving for Paris?
In a few weeks.
I asked, do any of you plan to watch the Games on television?
Absolutely not.
Why not?
Why should we? Nothing is interesting about it.
The Rhodes one said we might take a look on Instagram if something pops up, like Simone Biles. I know who she is, she said.
NBC is paying $7.65 billion for the rights to the rings in the United States through 2032. In April, the network announced it had sold $1.2 billion in advertising for the Paris Games and is on track to set a new sales record. In a Summer Games first, every Paris event will be available on the NBC streaming service Peacock. NBC has signed deals to post clips on X and Snapchat. NBC is also sending 27 content “creators” to Paris.
Why are they doing that, my nieces and my son asked?
Because, I said, they are trying to get your attention.
Ugh, my son said.
This, he said, is like when U2 put that album in everyone’s iTunes library even though nobody asked for it.
We all will recall now that the 2014 “Songs of Innocence” album turned out. As a headline in Forbes describes it, an “unforgettable blunder.”
I said, what does U2 and that album have to do with the Olympics?
He said, it’s exactly the same. Here, they’re going to flood everyone’s social accounts with Olympic stuff even though no one is asking for it. Gross.
The Rhodes niece said, yes, exactly – just a few days ago, my Instagram feed was flooded with Disney Pixar Fest. She added, I didn’t want that.
—
Then commenced a discussion about what might make them take a look—at a clip of Biles, say—if it popped up, and this discussion tracked exactly what I have heard at USC in my classes for the past 13 years.
Young people, especially college kids, have an incredibly keen sense for content that is both organic and authentic.
If it doesn’t pass that sniff test, organic and authentic, it’s a no-go.
One of the 27 “creators” being sent to Paris is Livvy Dunne, the American gymnast with the Pittsburgh Pirate rookie sensation pitcher boyfriend. She likely will score big numbers but, let’s be real, it may be – I say may be – not simply because she knows gymnastics. One might survey her millions of male followers. Something about a Perfect 10.
Another is Harry Jowsey, a reality TV star. Opposite side of the coin, if you will: his Insta feed is filled with pics of him with his shirt off.
When I showed the list of the 27 creators to my 25-year-old daughter, who is dead center the demographic the IOC is after – living her best 20-something life on the Lower East Side of NYC, working for a start-up en route to an MBA, TikTok savvy, knows all about “Love Island,” has a clutch of hipster friends – the only one she could name, aside from Dunne, was Jowsey. And not in a complimentary way.
How, exactly is this the ticket to reviving the Olympics?