W31 - Insights from the Tokyo Olympics

I’ve been watching a lot of Olympic events recently and have two insights.

1. In the span of one Olympic cycle, the video industry has been completely transformed.

The first immediate consequence is that I watched many niche events this year. The previous Rio Olympics were in 2016, when people still primarily watched on television, relying on CCTV’s live broadcasts. Now it’s on apps with on-demand viewing; you can clearly see schedules and statistics, and every event has highlights available. The cost of watching niche sports is very low.

The second immediate consequence is that the sense of experiencing a match has diminished, especially for major ball sports. Take the recently concluded European Championship: watching football used to be a ritual—big-club matches were like a candlelit dinner—but short videos have turned every game into fast food you can consume anytime, anywhere. Spending two hours watching feels very different from two minutes; the quick-hit format lacks lingering satisfaction. In addition, the broader historical context around this Euro is different, so public attention on matches isn’t as intense—maybe the people around me have just gotten older.

2. Spectator appeal in competitive sports = technical skill + tactical depth.

Because I watched many events I had only heard about before, I realized that sports with strong spectator appeal combine both technical skill and tactical depth; only those that meet both criteria can become broadly popular across cultures and regions. (Barriers to entry and cost also matter.)

What is technical skill? It’s when you watch a trampoline event for the first time and exclaim, “Wow—trampolining can do that?” The backyard trampoline looks like a toy by comparison.

What is tactical depth? I remember a men’s singles semifinal on Sunday—Chen Long versus Kim Ting. Facing an aggressive attacker like Kim, during a timeout the coach told Chen Long to treat the match as a whole and not be drawn into an early attrition battle, to stay committed to his own tactics.

Events like sailing, whitewater canoeing, or flatwater sprinting are highly demanding technically for individual athletes but lack tactical complexity; spectators don’t need to think, they can simply appreciate the performance. By contrast, team sports like handball or water polo require tactical sophistication to win, but the technical impressiveness is lower, and watching them can become tiring after a while.