Bloomberg Businessweek - USA (2019-06-10)

U

S

N

E

S

1

16

Edited by

James E. Ellis

● Organizers bet that adding

skateboarding whizzes like Sky

Brown will lure younger viewers

The Olympic Games have long been among the

world’s premier marketing events, with hun-

dreds of millions of people worldwide tuning in

to watch the human drama as athletes from more

than 200 nations compete for the gold. Yet this

decidedly mass-market broadcast event has been

losing younger viewers, who increasingly spend

time on social media and online entertainment. So

organizers of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics are count-

ing on skateboarding to help bring back millen-

nials as fans, and it may be a 10-year-old girl who

steals the show.

With key measures of television audiences

down from 2008 levels and interest among the key

youth demographic waning—viewership among 18-

to 35-year-olds fell at least 25% for the 2016 Rio

Games from four years earlier—organizers of the

2020 Games have added skateboarding as a medal

event for the first time. Youth-friendly surfing and

sport climbing will join the games as well.

“Young people still have an incredible interest

in the Olympic Games,” says International Olympic

Committee Sports Director Kit McConnell. “But

thewaytheyareconsumingtheOlympicGames—

thetypeofcontenttheyarewatchingandtheways

andtheplatformsonwhichtheyarewatching—are

fundamentally changing.”

Enter Sky Brown, the Anglo-Japanese skate-

boarder who was named in March to the British

Olympic squad. The elementary schooler has

already drawn millions of views to internet videos

of her fearless, technically advanced skating—an

alluring statistic for an event that’s looking to per-

suade online fans to tune into revenue-earning TV

network coverage. “With skateboarding becoming

an Olympic sport I think it’s super exciting,” says

Brown, who will turn 11 in July. “It’s going to be

really cool with people doing super-gnarly tricks,

and really fun to watch.”

Part of the challenge is how to present BROWN: PHOTOGRAPH BY EMILY SHUR FOR BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK; WHITE: RYAN MILLER/GETTY IMAGES

CAN

THIS

10-

YEAR-

OLD

SAV E

THEOLYMPICS?