Why Winter Olympic growth opportunity sports like skating cannot stand still
Major competition is the lifeblood of all sport, where firmly laid foundations and high-class athleticism combine to deliver champions. Skating’s global stars have performed in front of massive audiences at the Olympics in Milan recently but for the sport as a whole, the Games are only the start of the story, meaning the opportunity for return on investment has never been stronger.
For the first time, we are going to the market with skating’s commercial and media rights together, packaging value in this innovative environment where anything is possible. The net has been cast for expressions of interest and we look forward to hearing how leading global agencies propose to boost skating’s presence on the world stage.
The International Skating Union (ISU) has been around for 134 years, making it one of the oldest sports federations recognised by the International Olympic Committee. Figure skating, speed skating, short track and synchronized skating boast a combined following of an estimated 330m people, which speaks for its high quality and refreshing, innovative approach.
No matter what the heritage, all sports bodies say they want to modernise. Capturing new audiences has become a buzz-phrase. As tricky as it might sound on the ice, skating is ‘walking the walk’.
Skating with Deloitte
Committing to innovation can be complex with more than a century of history in the back pocket but, from President Jae Youl Kim to the members, partners and a reinforced staff, the dedication to change is impressive. Why? Because what was the best for skating in 1892 might not be the right course for today’s rapidly-evolving sporting and social landscape: the genesis of ISU’s long-term strategy: Vision 2030.
As a result, we have been building the product in the arenas with a comprehensive sports presentation programme putting the athletes front and centre of the entertainment. All of that is extended to making a broadcast product that explains the sport clearly to new audiences:
That’s all part of telling stories and the Olympics proved the scale of the public’s craving for those. To do so, the ISU are utilising a geographically-targeted social media strategy yielding 408m video views on the organisation’s own channels during the Games, a 37-fold increase on Beijing 2022 and American figure skater Alysa Liu landed 2.8m new followers on her own in the three days after landing Olympic Gold.
A new alliance forged with strategic partners Deloitte means we can harness all that data in the best way possible to build the business of skating.
Potential new fans are also on streaming services – so skating went there too. It’s too simplistic to say that Glitter and Gold is figure skating’s equivalent of Drive to Survive, but it does remind us that an engaging story well told has never been an unfashionable concept.
Athletes first
Raising the profile of athletes is at the heart of the ISU’s approach. That also incorporates the boosting of their conditions – working with technology that can support their data and training and analysing the nature of the competitions they participate in.
A great example of that is with short track. A sport of pace, power and precision, the world fell in love with it at the Olympics and now we have a fully-fledged Short Track World Tour with registered IPs on the teams created and owned by ISU. Its popularity has been such that there are already more events in the annual calendar in coming years.
We are continually assessing the sport on the ice and how best to make it work for the athletes. Another example is synchronised skating, with the new competition category ‘Synchro9’ designed to expand its global reach. It has already become the first synchronised skating category ever included in the Olympic programme at the next Winter Youth Olympic Games in 2028.
Simply pressing copy and paste on what we did last year is not in skating’s DNA.
The desire to modernise in skating has never been stronger and I would challenge anyone to name a sporting property with as much growth potential as we now have on the ice.
Colin Smith is the Director General of the International Skating Union