How does athletics make an impact outside of the Olympic window and attract a new generation? We look at why evolution is so important

During last year’s Tokyo Olympics, athletics had the highest number of broadcasting hours, the largest number of media articles written about it and the number of shared articles across social media. Over 62 million social media conversations focused on athletics while the sport also had the highest number of video views across the IOC and Tokyo Olympic Games website. 

It’s safe to say it is the number one sport to watch when the Olympics and Paralympics
take place – but how can it grow outside of that bubble? 

“While it’s nice to be able to say we are the No.1 Olympic sport, it can’t just become an academic conversation because the biggest challenge we’ve got is probably not from sport,” World Athletics president Sebastian Coe said in December. 

“It’s from other areas of activity where young people have a shorter focus.

“What they [teenagers] consume in terms of content is much shorter [these days]. If you speak to anybody in broadcast, they’ll tell you that the average length that most people would prefer to watch a television programme is about 7-8 minutes. So it means that we’ve got to be very clear that our benchmark is not just sport.”

Engaging Gen Z – those born between 1997 and 2012 – is the sport’s biggest challenge. With social media, endless streaming services and the popularity of Youtube still strong, the current generation’s likes and trends will be based on content from those channels.

Sports have capitalised on that data. Formula One’s Drive to Survive series on Netflix has seen a 40% increase of viewership in the US while seven of the most watched 10 races in history have come in the three years since that series launched. 

Basketball’s The Last Dance encapsulated the behind the scenes journey of Michael Jordan’s six NBA titles at the Chicago Bulls, while golf is looking to do a docu-series into the PGA Tour and tennis into the ATP and WTA Tours. 

“I think a Netflix-style documentary [for athletics] would definitely work and would be amazing, where you get to know the culture of some of the athletes which will help showcase themselves,” said world 200m champion Dina Asher-Smith at the Müller Birmingham Diamond League earlier this summer.

“I think there’s sometimes a disconnect about what athletics is around the wider media and such a documentary would help create an insight into what it takes to be elite and how much fun it actually is.”

Athletics, though, is made up of many different sports under one umbrella. It’s not as easy to say to athletes, compared to 10 F1 teams, “can your drivers take part in this series?” Such a proposal could be possible but it would look very different to previous Netflix series right now.

Instead, a better way to look at how to grow the sport could come down to how the public perceives it. How appreciative are we of the difference between the elite level and your average athlete? Does the average viewer understand the meaning of what a good time/distance is in an event? Can you go to athletics meets and not fully understand every aspect to enjoy yourself?

“Athletics is such a great sport but it’s almost about how you understand numbers on the clock,” said 800m Olympic silver medallist Keely Hodgkinson. “If you knew what 45.94 in the 400m hurdles meant then you might actually get excited, whereas normal people see that time and they’re like, ‘what does that mean?’”

Four-time Olympic sprint champion and BBC pundit Michael Johnson concurs. 

“People don’t understand or care about times,” he tweeted. “Focus on competition between the athletes. Narrative is critical. Any race has an automatic narrative, but because we inside the sport are obsessed with times we present the sport that way. And it fails!”

Creating such a narrative is important because that then leads into those watching athletics for the first time to care more about the times and world records due to that deeper feeling for an athlete’s story and background.

Events like the recent Night of the 10,000m PBs in the UK did just that. While their core aim was personal bests and qualification for this summer’s World Championships, winners of races were interviewed on a main stage opposite a grassy bank packed with spectators.

The victors on the track also got the chance to do a lap of honour while dozens of athletes also took part in podcast episodes promoting the meet beforehand. These same runners are part of the Gen Z cohort that the sport needs to inspire.

Such an event felt similar to, say, going to watch the darts where you didn’t have to know all the details about the sport to have a good time.

“Obviously, number one you need the fields, so we had to build some regularity, we had to have a way of generating bigger, better quality, deeper fields,” Ben Pochee, race director of Night of the 10,000m PBs, told AW.

“But then there’s creating atmosphere and I think it all folds in. If you can create entertainment, and you can bring crowds, you start to generate atmosphere – and that for me is a key catalyst for performance. I think it’s all linked.”

Night of the 10,000m PBs, like the Diamond League, was on the BBC. For athletics to grow outside of that Olympic and Paralympic bubble, the storytelling and entertainment value that it presents must improve and TV coverage becomes the fuel to that fire. 

Today there is a very different landscape to the era of athletics on the box from the 1970s and 1980s, though. Behaviours from generations change and, while athletics can’t abandon its traditions, there is going to have to be some form of evolution.