Mens sana in corpore sano

“A sound mind in a sound body” is the phrase always associated with the Olympics and its movement. 

The International Olympics Committee (IOC), the custodian of that movement, is NOT a governing body with which I am very familiar, but sometimes a fool, a jester, is a good candidate to say silly ill-informed things.

The Fool acts as a commentator on events and is one of the characters who is fearless in speaking the truth.
– Wiki

Shakespeare wrote these characters in almost all of his plays, most famously King Lear, always with great success as the entertaining storytelling mechanism.

That, of course, is the great secret of the successful fool – that he is no fool at all.
– Isaac Asimov

Many of us consider ourselves a long-time friend of Saudi investment into sport, especially because now so many of our community are earning a crust out there, and we all want them to do well. One of that ex-pat community sent this, with some understandable and deserved pride. 

Association with a storied organisation like the IOC is clearly a bit of a coup for the Kingdom, and all absolutely in their grand strategy for the country and its youth. Good for them. This is a win for Saudi. 

 

But for the Olympic movement? 

I read the article and the quotes. 

We believe that to take part in the Olympic Games is one of the greatest honours any athlete can achieve. And we are proud to support the writing of a new chapter in Olympic history that has the potential to inspire new dreams and new ambitions for literally millions of athletes around the world.

One takes a deliberate short pause for reflection. Just in case you are reading it wrong. We are talking about e-sports here, right? 

 

What has that got to do with the word “athlete?”

For years one of the reasons that e-sports has struggled in our industry to find definition, and a clear business model, is that the name is simply a misnomer. Many thought it meant competing in the EA versions of FIFA or Madden, and if we were actually dealing with that, playing sports video games, the name “e-sports” could, maybe, apply. A stretch, but possible. 

But no, e-sports has very little to do with sports. It’s mainly shoot-em-up games like Call of Duty.

What on God’s green earth has the Olympic “mens sana in corpore sano” got to do with guys (it’s mainly guys) in a sedentary position, likely unfit and pale, looking into a screen, role-playing an alter-ego killing machine?

An answer could be that these pro-gamers are physical specimens, the fruit of hours of training (also mental) to get to this elite level. A simile of Luke Littler training for hours on his out-shots; or an Excel modelling star, able to bash out macros at will through hours of practice under the severe pressure of an investment banking deadline.

Sorry, I just can’t get there. The KPI, after all, is usually the bodycount of dead people you slaughter, and that’s tough to match to the Olympic ethos, if truth be told.

Additionally, these games they play are the asset, the IP, of someone else; the game publishing company. This doesn’t sound like sport either. 

 

One could suggest that the IOC’s “purpose” has maybe got slightly off-message? 

With the Paris Games imminent, this announcement seems a decent moment to discuss what the Olympics and IOC actually consider themselves to now be, in the very competitive market for modern content and eyeballs.

Because, this is the nub of the argument. It is the crux of everything in this industry. 

Are we talking about an ethos of pure sport, or managing an entertainment product reaching out for as many fresh audiences as possible? Are we going for growth by expanding appeal to new demographics, geography and gender, cost what it costs to tradition? Or do we instead double-down on our consolidated base of true sports fans, leaving the product as it was always intended? Are we in this industry to grow commercial revenues, or to be good custodians of what sport has represented (in the case of the Olympics, for millennia)?

That is the source of the Nile question for all sport business debates today, and has been the core conversation for 7 years on our AYNE podcast.

It is not difficult for me to admit that I wasn’t quick enough to understand how profound a question it really was, but these Columns, especially in 2024, betray an admission that, perhaps, my co-host has always been right, and I have been wrong. 

It is clear here that the IOC has found its own answer in its head, the one any business person would, and has decided to expand its brand, its total addressable market, its appeal, and its potential revenue base.

And that’s fine. We are all familiar with this playbook. Introduce sport-lite versions of the product to newer younger audiences in the places where they currently live. Gaming, Fortnite, Roblox, celebrity influencer culture, TikTok.

And when so many athletes and fans are avid gamers, it makes patent sense to find structures for cross-promotion.

But, it just doesn’t feel right for the pinnacle of our product, the Olympic brand. Does it?

 

What actually are the Olympics, and for what do they stand? 

This isn’t the obtuse and retarded question it may first appear. The Boomer generation may have clear ideas on that, but for those under 30, it is a very valid question. 

What do they think The Games actually are? Something like the Sidemen? Mr Beast? Some collection of sports that were invented before Dana White’s latest offering of power-slapping?

 

Yes, we need to ask this question, because what we all do now depends on being at peace with the answer.

The first version of this Column was then a selection of paragraphs cut and pasted from Wiki, accurately and eruditely explaining the ethos and history of the ancient and modern Olympics.

It’s all here if you want that.

But the second version below came straight from the gut, heart and soul of a seasoned sports fan. An emotional articulation of the brand.

 

The “Why” of Mount Olympus.

The Olympics comes from way back, with the deep roots in ancient Greece and its mythology, Hercules and Zeus. The idea of a man competing physically with another man, pretty closely linked to Homer and his epic poems of war and adventure. Achilles, Hector, Ulysses. 

That’s what they now call “the vibe”.  A time of heroes, all gloriously immortalised in books, murals, statutes and vases.

Heritage doesn’t come any purer than this. 

Men are haunted by the vastness of eternity and so we ask ourselves, will our actions echo across the centuries? Will strangers hear our names long after we are gone and wonder who we were? How bravely we fought? How fiercely we loved? 

Names echoing across the centuries.

Can anyone name one e-sporter that has ever lived? The obvious answer I’d suggest is illuminating.

These old Olympic games then got lost in the changing Age of Empires, but were resurfaced at the end of the 19th century by the splendidly named Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a French posh-boy of good heart. If ever there was a “fin de siecle” moment, it was this. Bringing back, at the start of the 1900s, something from the very core of our humanity.

In many ways, the Baron had the same vision, at the same time, as the amateur Corinthian sports evolving in English public schools like Eton and Rugby. An ideal of athletic chivalry. And, perhaps, something more. A rite of passage, the physical and mental testing of an athlete.

From the book Sport’s Perfect Storm

L’important dans la vie ce n’est point le triomphe, mais le combat, l’essentiel ce n’est pas d’avoir vaincu, mais de s’être bien battu.
– Baron Pierre de Coubertin

…The important thing in life is not the triumph, but the struggle, the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.

All very similar to Kipling‘s poem that hangs at the All England Tennis Club. 

Baron Pierre also held dear the grander idea of a gathering of international athletes that would promote peace and understanding across all cultures. An Olympic Village, both physical and metaphysical, an idea younger readers may recognise from Harry Potter and the Triwizard Tournament in Goblet of Fire. The competition came from far and wide.

The events of the 20th century, Moscow, The Somme, Gallipoli, Normandy and Hiroshima, sadly put all that romantic dreamland in its place, (like the death of Cedric did in Potter) but this vision of sport, as human bonding, loyal hard competition, a search for absolute excellence, remains central.

To get to call yourself the best, the Olympic Champion, worthy of Zeus and Mount Olympus, is a prize worth dedicating your life to.

 

The IOC is sport at its purest. 

The Games, in practice, take place only once every four years and absolutely have this premium of scarcity and exclusivity, under a brand and a banner of “doing good, and being great”. Only occasionally do you get to see the Olympics, and become familiar with elite athletes in less popular events like fencing, shooting, sailing, pentathlon, cycling, judo.

The famous Olympics sports. 

You had no understanding of what these athletes did for the rest of the four years, how they made any money to live, and you didn’t really care how the IOC collected and distributed its dosh from TV, sponsorship etc. You, absolutely, had no idea about Organising Committees, IFs (international federations), and you didn’t care a jot.

Because Ovett and Coe would only meet at the Olympics, and that was all that mattered. To come away as an Olympic champion is, indeed, to live in eternity. 

Zatopek, Juantorena, Lasse Viren, Carl Lewis, Wilkie, Mary Peters, Tommy Smith, Michael Johnson, Redgrave, Mennea, Daley Thompson. 

Heroes all. Giants. Grandchildren giving their old ones the last great emotions of their lives.

 

Anyone remembering e-sports right now, as the dust gets in their eye?

Didn’t think so.

 

This is the Golden Child of Sport.

A unique and very special brand, at least for our generation. The very definition of the word.

A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller’s good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create and store value as brand equity for the object identified, to the benefit of the brand’s customers, its owners and shareholders.
– Wiki

To distinguish from the rest, and create lasting value/equity. A good brand needs constant nurturing; a great brand needs protecting.

The whitest of white shirts, the very best brands, are delicate and always the easiest to stain. We have seen all that in spades with the Olympics, in the years of Soviet-block slave professionalism, political boycotts, Jesse Owen and Nazis, drugs and doping, hosting cities losing oceans of money. We also have whiffed the pungent smell of corruption around the governance of all this. The IOC and FIFA have never been the Virgin Mary.

All this chips away at the brand.

Then we winced, as professional sports got shoe-horned in, for some reason. Golf, tennis, soccer, even the basketball Dream Team. All lovely, but ultimately actually brand dilution, by failing a very simple acid test.

Is winning an Olympic gold medal the pinnacle of this sport? If the answer is no, none of these sports should be included in the Olympics.

Golf, tennis and soccer should therefore be nowhere near the IOC. Not because they don’t drive audience and revenues, but because they are brand dilutive. They are not Mount Olympus for their sports.

The shirt has got very dirty over the years, but it is still the Olympics. 

This oratory of Lord Coe is one of sport’s most glorious parchments. If you don’t have time for the rest of the article, that’s fine. Just click on this video. That’s all you need.

Again, loads of dust in the room at this point. Rightly so.

 

There is NO brand in the world like those 5 Rings. 

But the hard-nosed will say that none of this heritage pays the bills, nor guarantees the interest of new generations; that many of these amazing athletes are not being rewarded for their dedication and talent. No one thinks about them for 4 years, and you can’t make any real money on a 20-day gig. Just like you can’t build a modern sport/entertainment/content business being open only 3 weeks in 200. You need what they call a 365-day narrative.

If the athletes can’t make a decent wage, this isn’t a world that will sustain the Olympic sports. In fact, in recent years, new business models and structures for the likes of sailing, swimming, triathlon, and now athletics with Michael Johnson, are trying to address this. This is good news.

The IOC, to be fair, are not deaf to all the realpolitik of what they do, and have tried to fully embrace the modern sports marketing playbook around new audiences, and fishing where the fish swim. They’ve tried things like their own Olympic TV channel. Indeed the Paris Olympics will introduce the new “sport” of breaking (also called b-boying, b-girling or breakdancing) as part of an effort to draw more interest from young people.

Pah!

I’m sorry, but no break dancer will ever deserve to be on the same podium as Ed Moses. No b-boying will give you that lump in your throat as a grandparent.

If you think about, it’s truly ridiculous, and just all a gimmick of audience growth and promotion. 

 

The Fool starts to gather his thoughts. 

The IOC is doing what many great brands do. They are diluting what makes them special, to go for the mass-market and filthy lucre. This isn’t new.

Pierre Cardin, YSL, Lamborghini making SUVs.

You chase short-term money and relevance, but you tarnish your heritage and tradition. 

The IOC is arguably losing its way, in an attempt to be something it isn’t, to attract an audience that really isn’t theirs, all in the name of still feeling important, and delivering big audience numbers for its broadcasters and sponsors.

E-sports doesn’t need the IOC brand to sell its event to the Saudis, but it’s worth more if it has it.

The IOC has done a license deal, like putting the Prada logo on a a box of mints.

But this is a brand extension too far, and they should have more faith in the enduring appeal of their core Herculean product. Serious physical competition like the UFC, boxing, even slapping, are all in vogue. People want to see that.

Give them it. Hard competition, blood sweat and tears.

If some younger audiences can not understand what the Greeks and the Baron were trying to do, as a mission, then that’s their problem. Their loss. They will have missed one of humanity’s great movements, and sport’s most beautiful asset. If they can’t see the purpose of the Olympics without e-sports, they should feel free to scroll right to their next video. They don’t deserve to be here.

As Lord Coe says, there is, indeed, “a truth to sport” and truth always matters in the end. Anywhere and everywhere. 

The truth is that e-sports isn’t sport!

Nowhere near. It is merely a marketing channel for the IOC, and no one winning in shoot-em-up games should get the same medal as Jesse Owens.

Because computer games can’t credibly translate mens sana in corpore sano.

“And one day we will tell our grandchildren that we did it right.”

Did we?

​