Enhanced Games on metaphorical trial: is the risk worth it for partners?
The Enhanced Games wants to sell itself as the future: faster, louder, richer and finally honest about the drugs elite sport has spent decades pretending do not exist. This weekend it lands in Las Vegas with a simple proposition. Let athletes use performance-enhancing drugs under medical supervision, put big prize money on the table, stream the spectacle and tell the world this is what modern sport really looks like.
But the real drama is not in the pool or on the track. It is in the boardrooms, insurers’ offices and regulators’ inboxes. Because the biggest problem for the Enhanced Games is not whether audiences will watch, it is whether any serious business wants to stand close if there is a fallout.
The organisers have announced their inaugural weightlifting, swimming and track-focused event at Resorts World Las Vegas, with 50 athletes, $25m in prize money and a distribution and streaming plan with Roku now firmly in place. It is a live commercial proposition.
Enhanced Games fragile?
However, that proposition looks fragile. In normal sport, injury risk is part of the game. In a doping-permissive event, risk is not incidental, it is effectively part of the product. If something goes wrong, a claimant will not just say they were injured competing – they will say the business model itself encouraged the conduct that caused the harm. Foreseeability, consent and the adequacy of medical safeguards would move straight to the centre of any dispute.
Then there is the regulatory headache. Enhanced is no longer just promoting an event; it is promoting a wider commercial ecosystem around “science-backed protocols and personalised wellness pathways”, with outside reporting describing the games as a marketing engine for testosterone, peptides and performance medicine that Enhanced is selling on their website. Once sport becomes the shop window for medicines, supplements or telehealth-style optimisation, scrutiny will not come only from sporting bodies. It will come from anyone interested in prescribing, advertising, consumer protection and product liability.
Athletes know that already. The promise of freedom comes with a catch: exclusion. Mainstream sport still runs through governing bodies, qualification systems and anti-doping codes. Those institutions may be unpopular, inconsistent and frequently accused of hypocrisy, but they still control the pathways that matter. World titles, Olympic qualification, sponsor-friendly visibility and the legitimacy that follows from them all sit on one side of the line. The Enhanced Games sits on the other.
Shaky commercial case
That is why the commercial case looks shaky. Sponsors want big audiences, but they also want clear governance, low reputational risk and an exit route if things turn ugly. A competition built around permitted doping offers the exact opposite. Even if viewers tune in out of curiosity, that does not mean blue-chip brands will want their logo beside the experiment. And distribution is no safer – broadcasters and streaming platforms are often willing to flirt with controversy, but not usually with open-ended legal, medical and youth-harm questions.
And then comes the most unforgiving audience of all: insurers. Insurance markets can price many risks, but they dislike uncertainty wrapped in controversy. A sporting event that openly embraces substances associated with injury, regulatory complexity and reputational harm is hazardous. Cover may exist, but on strict terms, with exclusions, elevated premiums and endless scrutiny around what was prescribed, who supervised it and whether any of it complied with the relevant rules.
The smartest thing about the Enhanced Games is that it understands modern attention and the sports media. The weakest thing about it is that attention is not the same as legitimacy. You can build a spectacle in Las Vegas. You can sell subscriptions and generate some headlines. But building a durable sports business is different. For that you need insurers, broadcasters, sponsors, regulators, medical professionals and athletes to believe the risk is containable. Right now, that looks like the hardest event on the programme.
Rufus Scholefield is an Associate at Howard Kennedy