Simone Biles won the gold. Suni Lee secured the bronze. Stars and Stripes in hand, the pair lept onto the floor, dancing and celebrating in one of the most inspirationally American images of the decade. Ratings are yet to come in, but early estimates suggest the primetime replay outdrew the NFL’s preseason opener by a ratio around seven to one.
27 years old, this is likely Biles’s last Olympics. At 21, Lee could compete in Los Angeles in 2028, but given her struggles with a kidney disease, this may be her final spotlight as well. Gymnasts peak at a cruelly young age, and with the sport’s following what it is, they don’t return from the Olympics to consistent national attention like their peers in basketball.
Why is this?
Why don’t we follow the Olympic sports?
Why do sports like swimming, figure skating, and—especially—gymnastics draw so much attention every four years only to fade into the background’s background when NBC returns to its regularly scheduled programming? Why do we see more of generational athletes like Biles, and like Michael Phelps before her, in Subway commercials than in active competition?
I don’t have an answer. But I have a few theories. One is about the present. One is about the future. I guess we could say the last one’s about the past. It isn’t, really, but it sure sounds good.
1. I’m not sure these sports aren’t followed between Olympics.
Every summer, USA Track and Field hosts national championships. Lately, these have been held in Eugene. Whether the events stand as Olympic qualifiers or not, professional athletes travel to Eugene (or Des Moines, or Sacramento) and compete against their countrymen.
When the Olympics are over, a large portion of 3×3 basketball teams will return to FIBA’s world tour. Team USA, which plays under the Miami name in FIBA competition, currently leads the global rankings, but a Serbian team is close on their heels with competitions ahead in Switzerland, Hungary, and Shanghai.
The Badminton World Championships are off this summer because of Olympic play, but they’ll return to Paris next year. In 2026, they’ll travel to India, which was supposed to host the Sudirman Cup last year before the event was relocated through a chain reaction of Covid-based schedule changes.
All these sports continue play when NBC and its global counterparts pack up their cameras. Many find their way onto TV. Each sport is a product beyond Olympic competition, and the existence of a product implies the existence of a market. The broader sports-watching public might not know the names of the world’s best triathletes, but someone does. Obviously, Badminton’s World Championships aren’t the Super Bowl, and as an American site, we’re specifically talking about American followings. But this is not a matter of no one following gymnastics once September comes.
2. The rise of college sports might be changing the situation.
NIL earnings aren’t public, but it’s at least possible that the highest-paid college athlete last academic year was a gymnast. Do more people follow Livvy Dunne on social media than watch her compete? Yes. But Florida—not Dunne’s LSU—drew larger average gymnastics crowds in 2022–23 than it did for men’s basketball, and Florida and LSU are not alone. Neither is gymnastics. The advent of streaming has made following medium-money college sports (those less established than football and basketball) easier practically than ever before. Emotionally, it’s easier for fans to form a connection with a team that has some history and a team that represents a school they care about than it is for fans to get into, say, the latest startup rugby sevens league.
Presumably, these medium-money college sports will reach an equilibrium soon. But if baseball and softball are roughly tripling their scholarship allowances, it’s safe to assume other sports are likewise rising. Where they land could fundamentally alter the 3.9-year Olympic offseason.
3. We like our teams to represent us.
The thing that made Biles and Lee’s celebration so moving for Americans was Biles and Lee’s American identity. At the Olympics, Biles and Lee represented us. When the Green Bay Packers play football, they represent the state of Wisconsin. When the Los Angeles Dodgers play baseball, they represent the city of Los Angeles.
In some ways, American indifference towards Olympics sports is heartwarming. When Simone Biles and Suni Lee compete against one another on behalf of themselves, we are unstirred. When they face off against each other in the Olympics, though, each a member of Team USA even in individual competition? It becomes historic.
There are qualifiers to this. Quality matters, which is part of why Major League Soccer’s always struggled to take off. Allegiances are rarely purely geographic, and some—my brother’s diehard Cleveland Guardians fanhood, for example—arise from arbitrary roots. But a lot of the lifeblood of the world’s biggest club sports comes from local cultural support. The Celtics’ championship parade ran through the heart of Boston. Excitement for the upcoming Bears season is loudest on sports radio in Chicago.
There’s also the historic element, which compounds the difficulty for Olympic sports to rapidly manufacture leagues of local teams. The Detroit Red Wings have played hockey in Detroit for 98 years. When sports’ societal corner has been occupied that long, it’s hard for competition to break in.
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Of all the ways for us to wind up following gymnastics or swimming annually, I’m most bullish on college sports being the vehicle. But new professional leagues do sometimes work, and they do enjoy that streaming benefit which has provided so much wind in college volleyball’s sails. The NWSL has done well for itself. It can be done.
Miscellany
- Major League Baseball’s’ postseason schedule is out, and it’s flexible. If both League Championship Series end early, the World Series will follow shortly after. This is a little tricky to pull off in a contract, because TV networks like to plan, but it’s good for all parties. The NBA Playoffs suffered a long layoff this summer, and while it’s impossible to know the impact on ratings, it certainly felt harder for us to lock back in on the Finals, especially with the Celtics such a large favorite.
- I haven’t seen enough of the new kickoff rule to have much of an opinion (it’ll be interesting to watch traditional kickoffs on Saturdays and then this new kind the next day), but congratulations to Sam Schwartzstein for his role in inventing the new way. He posted a joyous, dorky video of his reaction to seeing it live in an NFL preseason game, and I will admit that I am now likelier to approve of the new rule, even if I was leaning that way already.
- Georgia cut Rara Thomas, the wide receiver arrested last week on his second domestic violence charge. It’s complicated, to say the least. Consequences are always necessary. But when a college athlete is cut loose like this, there can be a lot of collateral pain. Hopefully the women and children in Thomas’s life are safe, and hopefully Georgia’s still invested in rehabilitating him. Former Alabama and Texas receiver Agiye Hall was sentenced this week on a drug trafficking charge.
- The NCAA wants to make the NIL market more transparent, launching a public database that tracks NIL deals. In Division I, athletes are at least technically required to disclose NIL payments above a certain size to their school. Schools are then required to disclose their data to the NCAA. The NCAA is then putting it into this website. I’m curious if the disclosure requirements are enforceable, but whether they are or aren’t, this is a small deal. If the database is accurate, it should make pricing more efficient, but inefficiency could help athletes as much as it could hurt them. Ultimately, the efficiency of pricing doesn’t seem to be the predatory corner of the NIL world right now.
- The Sunday Ticket lawsuit isn’t over yet, now poised to potentially stretch into an eleventh year. A U.S. district judge overturned the jury’s verdict on the grounds that two expert witnesses’ testimonies should have been excluded. I would love a legal explainer on this, because it appears that same judge was the one who presided over the trial where those expert witnesses testified? Anyway, this case has been dismissed and reinstated before. Hopefully Jerry Jones isn’t letting Mike McCarthy run his clock management on it.
- Katie Ledecky is the new most decorated female American Olympian ever, and Andy Murray has officially retired. Milestones all over the place during the Olympics.
