'The opportunities have been crazy': Olympics have fully entered their influencer era

PARIS — Fred Richard was 16 when the pandemic hit. TikTok was starting to boom, and like many of his generation, he passed his time scrolling. Then he decided to create.

Richard describes his first post as a “stupid comedy skit thing.” He had zero followers. It got 300 views.

“I just got 300 people that never knew me before just seeing my face,” Richard said. “And I come from a sport of gymnastics where you grow up wishing you could be seen by a bunch of people, even when you’re at the highest level. So I was like okay, there’s potential here.”

Richard, now 20, kept making videos. When he was allowed back into the gym, his TikTok (Fredrick Flips) started featuring cool gymnastic tricks. “You hit 10,000, 40,000, 500,000 views,” he said. “Then all of the sudden you’re reaching millions of people when you don’t even know what a building of a million people could look like.”

Richard was one of the breakout stars of the Paris Olympics, helping the U.S. men’s gymnastics team to a bronze medal, its first in 16 years. That was on Day 4. The University of Michigan sophomore is staying in Paris an additional week-plus to create more content — boosting his brand and also his cause.

“The opportunities have been crazy, I mean I’m going to be on Kevin Hart’s podcast. Kevin Hart’s podcast!” Richard said. “But for me it’s all about bringing more Black kids into the sport, bringing more opportunities to people in my sport. I feel like now I have the door open to capitalize on making that happen.”

Richard exemplifies one of these Games’ most prominent trends: The Olympics has fully entered its Influencer Era. Paris 2024 athletes have used social media to fully maximize their brands, hoping to stay relevant outside of the Olympic cycle — something many of their predecessors have struggled with for decades. Evolving attitudes, specifically a more lenient interpretation of the IOC’s Rule 40 (regulating how athletes can benefit from commercial activity around the Games) has made it easier for Olympians to cash in on their two weeks of visibility. Meanwhile Olympics stakeholders — especially NBC — have embraced influencers and established personalities to help promote the games to a Gen Z audience, a concept that previously may have been considered sacrilege. After all, amateurism was a foundational ideal of the Olympic movement.

“I never like being called an influencer. I’m a rugby player first, influencer second,” said USA bronze medalist Ilona Maher, who now boasts more than 3 million followers on Instagram — 2 million of whom she gained during the Games by creating quirky, authentic videos about the Olympic experience. “But it’s what I’ve had to do to make money and draw more attention to our sport. So I guess I am an influencer, and that’s fine. It’s been a positive experience so far, even if I’d rather be known as a rugby player.”

NBC hasn’t shied away from discussing its shift in strategy. It even put out a news release in April announcing its team of 27 content creators, who would be credentialed and sent to Paris to create content around the Games. That’s a larger team than two-thirds of countries participating in the Olympics.

NBC also enlisted celebrities to be part of its coverage, including Snoop Dogg and Alex Cooper, who hosts “Call Her Daddy,” the most-listened to podcast among women on Spotify. Snoop’s inclusion has been widely embraced by audiences because of his natural curiosity and enthusiasm. Fans chant his name wherever he goes in Paris, and he seems to be everywhere. On the first Sunday of coverage, NBC reported 41.5 million viewers across its platforms — those are NFL-like numbers. It’s a confluence of favorable time zones and the increase in streaming, but ratings have soared past a lackluster 2021 in Tokyo.

While it’s hard to quantify the role of influencing, there have been more celebrities at events than any other Olympics, ranging from Tom Cruise to Anna Wintour to Tom Brady. It makes sense; Paris is an accessible world-class city popular among celebrities anyway. And a lot of the engagement is organic.

For example Flavor Flav saw a social media post in May from USA water polo captain Maggie Steffens, who said many of her teammates have to take second or third jobs to make ends meet and help fund nutrition, training and travel costs. That’s all despite winning three straight gold medals. Flavor Flav donated an undisclosed amount of money for a five-year sponsorship deal with U.S. water polo, and he has been to all of the Olympic matches, influencing the team authentically. Not only do sources say Flavor Flav has procured his own tickets, but he’s bought tickets and brought along famous friends like Spike Lee and Guy Fieri.

“You train in this silent world,” U.S. water polo coach Adam Krikorian said. “Then all of the sudden there’s cameras and Flavor Flav and Dr. [Jill] Biden and Spike Lee are joining in, everyone is hopping on the bandwagon.” Krikorian wasn’t complaining. The team has benefited tremendously from the exposure. It’s just a distraction it needed to manage. Exposure can raise awareness. When discus thrower Veronica Fraley posted to X that she could not pay rent, Flavor Flav and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian (who is also Serena Williams’ husband) stepped in. Ohanian posted a screenshot of a $7,760 Venmo payment.

The economic realities for many Olympic athletes have improved, but they can remain jarring. On average, top-level athletes are paid $2,000 per month stipends by the USPOC, but those numbers fluctuate based on sport and world ranking. Perform poorly that might go away completely. The USPOC provides athletes with a vast network of resources, including tuition grants, health care — as well as room and board when they are training with the national team. Athletes get performance bonuses for medals at world championships or Olympics. In Paris, the USPOC will pay $38,000 for a gold medal, $22,500 for a silver and $15,000 for bronze.

But making a living as simply an athlete can be tough for many. For example, the top U.S. women’s water polo players play professionally in Europe — though sources suggest those salaries are no more than $40,000. What’s more: There are only so much sponsorship dollars to go around, and NIL is cutting into the space many brands reserved for the athletic space. Hence, why Olympians have to hustle harder.

Social media has become a critical component to the Olympic moment. Immediately after the USA women’s gymnastics team won a team gold medal, Simone Biles and her teammates asked: “What TikTok should we make?”

Maher first learned about the power of a viral TikTok in Tokyo when she posted about the beds. That helped put her on the map. She is now the world’s most followed rugby player on social. For Maher, creating content comes naturally. Her sister, Olivia, invented the “girl dinner” meme.

In videos, Ilona Maher refers to the Olympic Village solely as the villa, an ode to “Love Island.” She advocates for body positivity. The brand deals followed. Maher’s trademark red lipstick led to a partnership with Maybelline.

“I think it’s very hard in the sport that I play, where there’s not a lot of eyes in our country, to be something that brands want and be valuable to them,” Maher said. “I was able to get myself out there and then so many more people were tuning into our games. People think of athletes as unbreakable, very strong and focused. At the end of the day, we can be funny and weird. It’s nice to be able to humanize ourselves.”

Maher said influencing has been a positive experience so far as she’s in the heat of the moment, but she does worry about downsides as she amasses more fame. “There are so many more eyes on me, so I do get more afraid of saying the wrong thing or making a mistake,” she said.

Maher came to Paris with eight corporate partners. According to Lowell Taub, who represents Maher along with Rheann Engelke from Range Sports, Maher has an opportunity for an “iconic magazine cover” and “exciting opportunity in the television world,” both of which she will contemplate after the Games.

Maher also stayed in Paris after her team won a bronze medal in the first week. That includes doing work with her newest partner, Google, to create content surrounding artificial intelligence.

Taub explains that once the USOPC loosened its stance on Rule 40 ahead of the Tokyo games, the Olympics entered a modern world where athletes could leverage their moments aligned with the other professional sports leagues. Previously, athletes could be punished if their image or likeness was used commercially by non-Olympic partners during a blackout period — nine days before, during, and three days after the Olympic games.

“It was a struggle in the past,” said Taub, who has worked with many prominent Olympians, including Gabby Douglas, Chloe Kim and Bode Miller. “You could go to a judge and get an injunction, but that process took weeks, months, sometimes years. Now, Rule 40 is basically out the window as long as they don’t use the Olympic IP. They heard our complaints for years about limiting earning potential for athletes in their highest earning window.”

For an athlete like Richard, it meant once he’s done competing, he wasn’t done getting to work. And neither were his teammates, such as Stephen Nedoroscik, who achieved accidental virality when he snoozed off before his event, giving him the title of “pommel horse guy.” Men’s gymnastics is in a state of fragility. There are now just 15 college men’s gymnastics programs, among the fewest in any NCAA-sponsored sport. Richard wants young boys — specifically in the Black community — to take up the sport, because for him, it was a path to a college scholarship and endless opportunities.

“Every day I’m here in Paris, I’m going to work, doing something different media-wise,” Richard said. “I mean, it’s a job. But it’s serving a big purpose.”