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≡ UNIQUELY OLYMPIC ≡
“Deloitte, an IOC TOP Partner, measures fandom across four key areas: addressable value, digital brand value, extendibility, and cultural relevance. FandomIQ tracks real-time fan engagement by detecting sentiment spikes during live matches. Analytics platforms analyze ticket sales, merchandise purchases, social media sentiment, Net Promoter Scores, and customer lifetime value. The New England Patriots even examine behavioral patterns at Gillette Stadium to predict retention.
“All of these tools work effectively. And all of them assume something that doesn’t exist in the Olympic context: a fixed, ongoing, identity-defining allegiance to a specific competitive entity.
“The Olympics don’t provide any of these things. Most viewers can’t name a single athlete in most Olympic sports before the competition begins. They don’t follow archery or judo between Olympic cycles. There’s no season, no fixture list, no league standings. The behavioral infrastructure that traditional fandom relies on simply isn’t present.”
That’s from a brilliant and important Linkedin essay by American marketing expert Terrence Burns, who has contributed to successful Olympic sponsorship campaigns ranging from Allianz to Delta Air Lines to Samsung and has been a strategist for six winning Olympic bids over 30 years.
In a lengthy piece, he explains – in a clear, concise way – how Olympic marketing is different and has to be different from the traditional sports marketing approach used for professional leagues in baseball, basketball, football, golf, hockey, tennis and so on.
Just some highlights; please take the time to read it all. But:
● “Unlike professional competitions, the Olympics are organized by country rather than by club. Viewers don’t need to choose a franchise or follow a season-long rivalry. Identification is immediate and temporary.
“That structure gives even casual viewers a reason to invest emotionally, without requiring any of the ongoing allegiance that traditional fandom depends on.”
● “I’ll agree that Olympic team sports like basketball and ice hockey do carry some of that tribal energy. People pick sides; they want their country to win. But those teams, that specific collection of athletes, only exist for a few weeks.
“They don’t play a season together, and they don’t have a home arena. There are no season tickets, and the roster changes every four years. Whatever tribal attachment forms, it forms fast, and then the team dissolves. That’s a different phenomenon than following the Lakers or the Maple Leafs across an 82-game season.”
● “Nielsen data consistently show that the Olympic primetime audience is about 56 percent female, nearly the mirror image of the NFL Super Bowl (54 percent male). The most anticipated Paris 2024 event, according to Gallup, was women’s gymnastics.
“The Science Media Centre in Spain found that a significant portion of Olympic viewers don’t follow any sporting events between Games; they engage intensely for two weeks and then disappear from the sports scene for four years. A fan engagement model based on season-ticket retention doesn’t address these viewers.”
Burns follows through on what this means for potential sponsors who have interest in investing in the Olympic Games – or Olympic sports – but can’t see the parallels to annual leagues:
“If the goal is to create year-round engagement plans based on 365-day content cycles, that misunderstands the cyclical nature of Olympic connection. What’s most misguided, in my view, is the effort to reduce the Olympic audience to just a sports audience, even though many of the viewers I’ve described don’t see themselves as sports fans at all.
“Most people who love the Olympics come for the stories, for human achievement, for national pride expressed through participation rather than winning, and for the rare experience of the entire world focusing on the same thing without arguing.”
And Burns is clear – where so many others aren’t – about how to approach the Games:
“And to those who’d say I’m being romantic about the Olympics, that at the end of the day it’s a sports property and needs to be marketed like one: the Olympics generate more reach than any sports property on earth. Five billion people for Paris.
“That reach exists precisely because the Olympics aren’t just a sports property. Treat them like one, and you voluntarily shrink your addressable audience to the fraction that behaves like traditional sports fans, abandoning the majority of people actually watching. …
“People who love the Olympic Games aren’t just fans of a sport. They’re part of a celebration of what humanity can become when it chooses to unite. Any marketer who tries to reduce that to the same tactics used to sell beer during Thursday Night Football is missing the point and letting down every brand that invests in the Games.”
Observed: Burns’ commentary – and there is much more – is a needed, and accessible, addition to help guide interest in the Olympic Movement, not only the Olympic Games, but the Paralympic Games and some of the individual sports and programs that are part of each event.
In a word, the Games are “different” and Burns does an excellent, concrete and informed job of explaining what “different” is. Well done.
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