Sandra Kwon’s life as an internet personality began during the pandemic, when the Emirates flight attendant started making videos to share funny stories and travel tips as part of her “Jeenie Weenie” persona.
Now, courtesy of US broadcaster NBC, she’s in the French capital to provide behind the scenes clips from the Paris Olympic Games to her more than 10mn followers.
Kwon is just one of dozens of YouTubers, TikTokers, Snapchatters and Instagrammers who have been flown into Paris by groups including YouTube, NBC in the US and Eurosport in Europe to create global buzz and coax a new audience into watching the Games. Broadcasters, national teams, sponsors and the International Olympic Committee have all tapped online influencers to help fill in storytelling gaps and win over a younger generation to the biggest event in sport.
While influencers — or creators as they are better known in the industry — are not new to sports, YouTube chief executive Neal Mohan says the scale of what is happening in Paris makes it the “first of its kind”.
“Our creators are incredibly innovative. Our creators know how to connect with an audience, and they invent new sports formats on a regular basis”, he said. “It’s all been leading up to this moment.”
The moves fit into a broader pattern of experimentation across sports, as right holders search for new ways to expand their audiences. The IOC has also been adding urban sports, such as skateboarding and breakdancing, to the programme in a bid to reach young fans.
“I’m not by any means a sports person. And yet I’m here at the Olympics, it’s insane”, Kwon told the Financial Times. “I went to the opening ceremony. That was just another level of awesomeness.”
One big challenge for Olympic viewers is understanding a sport they might only see once every four years. Kwon’s first assignment from NBC was to watch the fencing inside the Grand Palais, one of the most eye-catching venues on display in the French capital.
“Do you even know the rules to fencing? Because I don’t. Honestly everyone I ask here has no idea what fencing is,” she says to the camera in a short video posted while halfway up the dramatic curling staircase down which finalists descend on their way to compete. “It’s OK, I’m going to show you what fencing is.”
The clip, which includes a one-sentence explanation of the scoring system, has been viewed 183,000 times so far, although her most popular longer-form videos have notched up far bigger hits. “When Korean Skincare Works Too Well”, for example, has 68mn views.
Big Olympic broadcasters such as NBC and Eurosport have also deployed creators to help reach the next generation of viewers who may not have any history of watching the summer Games.
Gary Zenkel, president of NBC Olympics, said the idea of bringing in more social media stars came in the wake of the summer Games held in Tokyo in 2021 and the winter contest in Beijing six months later. Audience behaviour was shifting, he said, and creators offered new opportunities both for content distribution and marketing the core broadcast product.
“When you’re the Olympic broadcaster, your audience is everybody. And, it’s young and old. It’s multigenerational, multicultural”, said Zenkel. “There are certainly audiences, especially among younger generations, who spend more time on short-form content than they do on longer, more traditional, programming. And we will reach them through these platforms.”
Another creator on the ground is British food influencer Underrated Hijabi, whose signature content involves eating and drinking new foods, typically sweets and desserts, while sitting in her car. She has 1.8mn followers on YouTube, and another 3.5mn on TikTok. She was brought in by Eurosport to shine a light on the equestrian events taking place at the Palace of Versailles.
“I would love to try and get Olympians’ points of views, like how they started. Nowadays, everyone wants to be a YouTuber. I would love the people that watch me to think maybe I can be an Olympian,” she said. Having grown up in a house without a TV — her mother saw it as an unhealthy “distraction” — Paris is her first taste of the Olympics.
Aside from the armies of followers — NBC’s six chosen YouTubers have a combined fan base of more than 66mn on the platform — the hope is that creators also improve the overall viewing experience. Some media executives point to the huge success of sports documentary series such as Formula One’s Drive to Survive as the inspiration for trying to show as much action away from the field of play as possible. Creators can offer some of the same narrative richness, but in real time.
“What we’re finding on devices now is where’s the story that I can’t see?”, said Scott Young, who oversees sports production and content at Warner Bros Discovery in Europe.
“Where is that connection to an athlete or team? What’s everyone having for breakfast at the Olympic Village this morning? What was everybody seeing on the team bus before they arrived for the football match or the rugby match? That’s where we hope content creators fill the gap.”
Earlier this week, Simone Biles posted a five-second video on TikTok of the US gymnastics team pretending to crunch their way through their newly won gold medals. The clip has now been viewed more than 48mn times.
There are still tight restrictions for creators on posting interviews with athletes and live footage from competitions. But the IOC has loosened some of its rules to allow athletes to post social media content from inside competition venues, although there remain rules on how close to the start of the contest they can record. Rollo Goldstaub, head of global sports partnerships at TikTok, hopes these small changes will increase athlete-generated content, which users love.
“The real opportunity is to take athletes who you might not recognise in the street on a day to day basis, and in that two week period where they get a moment to shine, be a springboard and amplify what they achieve.”
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