The Olympics Has Entered Its Talent Show Era

I have always assumed there was a room somewhere in Lausanne, Switzerland containing sensible people. The sort of people who wore blue blazers, beige trousers, frowned a lot and protected important things from fashion.

Whenever a new craze appeared, these people would gather around a large table and say, “No. Come back when you’ve been around for a hundred years.”

This, I assumed, was roughly how Olympic sports were chosen.

Then I discovered how the International Olympic Committee (IOC) evaluates them, and now I’m wondering whether the Olympics is slowly becoming Britain’s Got Talent with drug testing.

The Olympic ideal is gloriously simple. Faster. Higher. Stronger. Three words. Not one of them is “engagement.” Not one of them is “reach.” Not one of them is “audience growth among Gen Z demographics.”

Yet when the IOC evaluates sports, it looks heavily at television audiences, internet popularity, public surveys, ticket demand and media coverage.

I read this with growing disbelief, because I had always assumed the Olympics existed to answer one question: Who are the best athletes? Increasingly, it appears to be asking another: What are people willing to watch?

At first, I thought this was nonsense. A sport should be Olympic because it produces extraordinary competitors. That’s the point. Otherwise we’d save a tremendous amount of time by handing out medals for YouTube subscribers.

Then I started looking at the numbers. Football has a gigantic global audience. Cricket’s audience is enormous. Volleyball attracts millions online. Basketball attracts millions.

Even table tennis has a digital following that would have astonished the younger version of me, who regarded it as something people did in holiday resorts while waiting for lunch.

The more I looked, the more uncomfortable I became. Not because the numbers were wrong. Because they were right.

Millions of people genuinely care, and this is where my certainty started to collapse.

For years, perhaps decades, I assumed Olympic status created popularity. Now I’m beginning to suspect popularity increasingly creates Olympic status. That’s a very different world. The real issue isn’t sport. It’s status.

Who gets to decide what matters?

The old answer was experts. The new answer seems to be everyone. Or at least everyone with a television, a smartphone and an internet connection.

Naturally, I resisted this conclusion. Resistance is one of my strongest qualities. I can defend a collapsing argument with the determination of a medieval castle under siege. I told myself that popularity and quality aren’t the same thing. Which is true.

The most watched television programme isn’t necessarily the best. The most downloaded song isn’t necessarily the greatest. The most followed person on social media isn’t necessarily humanity’s finest achievement.

But then reality arrived carrying a calculator.

The Olympics costs billions. Broadcasters pay billions. Sponsors pay billions. Without audiences, the money disappears. Without the money, eventually so do the Games.

The people running the Olympics know this. Which means they aren’t simply measuring sporting excellence anymore. They’re measuring relevance. And relevance is largely another word for attention.

That’s why sports such as surfing, skateboarding and climbing suddenly make sense.

Not because they’re better. Not because they’re worse. Because they bring viewers. They bring younger viewers. They bring people who may never have watched traditional Olympic competition in the first place.

The discovery here is slightly depressing.

I always thought the Olympics told the world what was important. Now it increasingly feels as though the world tells the Olympics what is important.

We used to measure excellence and hope people paid attention. Now we measure attention and call it excellence.

Perhaps that’s inevitable.

Perhaps it’s even necessary.

But it does leave us with an awkward question.

When the Olympic motto says Faster, Higher, Stronger, are we talking about athletes, or television ratings, like and views?

I still prefer the old answer.

Unfortunately, the spreadsheet appears to prefer the new one.

And these days, the spreadsheet gets a vote.