The X Games-ification of the Olympics

PARIS — The largest public square in France’s capital city has a bloody and barbaric history.

Place de la Concorde was the site where revolutionaries who toppled the French monarchy erected the guillotine and executed hundreds of their supposed enemies.

On August 11, 1792, a 39-foot statue of King Louis XV on horseback was overthrown and sent to be melted down. Over the next few years, crowds flocked to the square to witness the beheading of Louis XVI, his famous wife Marie Antoinette and other members of the nobility. The revolutionaries gave the square a temporary new name: Place de la Révolution.

More than 200 years later, Olympic organizers are trying to make Place de la Concorde the site of another revolution, albeit one that’s not so violent. This is where they’re staging an urban carnival of BMX biking, skateboarding, breaking and 3x3 basketball, sports that they hope will help transform the Olympics’ graying fanbase by attracting a younger audience.

It’s no coincidence, IOC spokesperson Mark Adams admitted, that surfing, skateboarding, sport climbing and 3x3 basketball debuted at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. Or that breaking — or break dancing as it’s more commonly known — is part of the Olympic program for the first time in Paris. The X Games-ification of the Olympics is part of the IOC’s bid to appeal to a younger demographic.

“We have to attract younger people. If we don’t, we’re dead,” Adams said. “It’s change or be changed. We would like to lead the change, not be led by it.”

The IOC’s emphasis on reaching younger viewers makes sense, said Jay Rosenstein, a former vice president of programming at CBS Sports. Rosenstein told Yahoo Sports that even back in the 1990s, “maybe only golf and baseball of mainstream sports had older demographics" than the Olympic Games.

When asked whether the addition of new sports can help the Olympics reel in younger fans, Rosenstein said that won’t be easy. Every TV property is struggling with that as the generational gap in viewing habits widens and traditional television continues to lose Gen Z viewers to Tiktok and YouTube.

The next chance for the IOC to measure its progress will come at the end of the Paris Olympics. Organizers can examine TV ratings, ticket sales and digital and social media metrics to gauge how the new sports are performing and whether they’re gaining traction with Gen Z audiences.

“I think they’ll spin the long game, citing incremental ratings increases in younger audiences and their engagement as a measure of success,” Rosenstein said.

Anecdotal evidence from the first few days of competition at Place de la Concorde so far has been encouraging. Young adults and families have braved 95-degree heat to fill stadiums and provide an incredible backdrop.

Thousands of flag-waving Brazilian fans filled La Concorde 3 stadium on Sunday to support national darling and eventual bronze medalist Rayssa Leal. Their chants of “Rayssa! Rayssa! Rayssa!” were so deafening that skateboarding icon Tony Hawk took out his phone during one of Leal’s runs and filmed a video of the scene.

The crowd at 3x3 basketball was equally vibrant two days later when the French men’s and women’s teams were playing. Roars could be heard across Place de la Concorde on Tuesday night after the hosts took down Poland thanks to Lucas Dussoulier’s tie-breaking and game-clinching jumper from behind the arc.

Even outside the stadiums, the scene has been lively. Kids bust a move in the breakdancing area or play games of knockout on an outdoor basketball court while parents sip beverages and watch from afar.

American skateboarder Poe Pinson admits that her sport being in the Olympics is "a little bit controversial" in skateboarding circles. Thousands signed an online petition six years ago urging the IOC not to include skateboarding at the Olympics.

“Skateboarding is not a sport,” the petition reads, “and we do not want skateboarding exploited and transformed to fit into the Olympic program. We feel that Olympic involvement will change the face of skateboarding and its individuality and freedoms forever.”

Pinson understands that sentiment but disagrees. She said that putting skateboarding on such a big stage in front of a mainstream audience provides marketing and endorsement opportunities for the athletes and helps outsiders view the sport “in a little bit more of a positive light.”

In many ways, Pinson, 19, is the perfect test case for Olympic organizers’ efforts to attract younger viewers. Before coming to Paris, the Florida native said she has “never really watched other sports” besides skateboarding. Now, swept up in the Olympic spirit, she is hoping to find time to watch golf, gymnastics, diving and, yes, even race-walking.

“I’m really interested to see that because that’s crazy to me,” Pinson said. “They can probably glide across the ground faster than I can jog.”

Don’t expect the IOC’s bid to attract a younger demographic to end in Paris. Olympic organizers have already approved changes to the modern pentathlon for Los Angeles 2028 geared at appealing to Gen Z.

In ancient times, the pentathlon tested the qualities of a complete athlete with running, jumping, javelin, discus and wrestling events. Pierre de Coubertin, one of the founders of the modern Olympic movement, modified it in 1912 to include equestrian show jumping, epee fencing, freestyle swimming, running and shooting.

The show jumping discipline drew criticism during the Tokyo Olympics due to the treatment of the horses randomly assigned to the athletes. Afterward, the IOC asked the sport’s governing body to demonstrate how modern pentathlon met the criteria for inclusion for Los Angeles 2028 and other future Olympics.

“The message was very clear,” the governing body’s secretary general Shiny Pang told Yahoo Sports. “[We] had to accelerate the evolution of modern pentathlon to remain relevant and retain our place in the Olympic program.”

The governing body formed a 21-member committee to consider how to replace show jumping with a discipline that stayed true to modern pentathlon’s heritage yet made it more appealing to a modern audience. Out of more than 60 options, the committee selected Obstacle, a head-to-head sprint through a course inspired by what is seen on popular TV shows like “Ninja Warrior.”

“We are very confident this is going to be a game changer for both modern pentathlon and the Olympics,” Fang said, citing a YouGov poll that found Gen Z and millennial viewers were both 40-plus-percent more likely to watch the Olympics on TV if it featured a Ninja-style obstacle race.

Those kinds of changes are what the IOC argues are necessary for the Olympics to remain relevant.

Otherwise, Adams said, “we won’t be here for very much longer.”