By Michael Lewis

As the Olympics unfold, I’m struck by a strange realization. I can name three speed skaters – Eric Heiden, Bonnie Blair, and Apollo Ohno. And as the 2026 games unfold this list might extend to four as Jordan Stolz continues to set records. 

I suspect most Gen Xers and Baby Boomers can, too. I’ve never intentionally tuned in to a speed skating competition, but somehow these figures from a very niche sport have become common cultural knowledge. 

In fact, I would guess that I can name as many Olympians over the past 50 years as I can name MLB or NBA players. This shouldn’t happen. The Olympics are a collection of minor sports that only occur every four years. They shouldn’t be able to claim the same mental real estate as major professional leagues who are in the business of creating narratives and heroes 365 days a year. 

So, as the 2026 Winter Olympics proceed, it’s worth taking note of what the Olympics reveal about how culture and fandom work.

The Olympics have a significant structural flaw. They only pop up every four years, and they feature (with a few exceptions) sports that Americans do not follow, played by unknown athletes. You would think the lack of continuous attention would make it impossible to create narratives that draw viewers and build the connections between athletes and fans to create the legends that make sports memorable.

But despite this flaw, the Olympics have created some of the most foundational moments in American sports history. 

When I think about my sports memories, the Olympics take up a surprising amount of space for a collection of unknown sports that only get the spotlight every few years. The 1980 Miracle on Ice, Mary Lou Retton in 1984, the USA Dream team of 1992, Kerry Strug’s vault in 1996, Shaun White’s halfpipe performances in 2006 and 2010, Michael Phelps in 2008, Simone Biles in 2016 and many other moments and stars have prominent places in the story of American sports.

The Olympic Magic

The principal thing the Olympics have going for them is a built-in, committed fan base. We know who to root for. We root for the skier, figure skater, or curler with USA on the uniform. It’s the same thing as University of Georgia fans rooting for a new group of kids every year – just because they are in red and black. It is the power of community. 

But in the Olympics, we scale up from UGA to the USA. Olympic moments have impact because they are shared. It is the “we did it” kind of fandom, and the Olympics have a powerful “we.” This is why they produce top ten sports moments, shared across a nation. You could even argue that the stories are part of what makes a nation – shared heroes.

Digging Deeper

Beyond nationalism, the Olympics are also a community-building machine for fandom because they are best in class in creating female sports fandom. The figure below shows male and female fandom rates from my annual fandom survey, the Next Generation Fandom Survey, for a collection of major US professional leagues and the Winter and Summer Olympics.

The data show some clear differences between the sexes. Male fandom rates are usually 50% to 100% higher, even for women’s leagues like the WNBA. The only exception is the Olympics, where male and female fandom is very similar.

There are multiple explanations. The Olympics feature more female athletes and sports that may have greater baseline appeal to women, like skating and gymnastics. There is a lesson here – build fandom where interest already exists. 

It’s also the form of storytelling. The Olympics feature real-time narrative creation – video packages where athlete’s backstories are interspersed with the actual competition. The Olympics also require less devotion since there is no need to follow year-round or to know all the stats. It is a more human-interest oriented approach.

The Olympics should be the blueprint for leagues and organizations looking to grow the female fan segment.

A Warning Sign

The Olympics also highlight a massive coming issue for sports and entertainment – the disappearance of culturally unifying events. 

American culture used to proceed on a set timeline. Each cultural event got its moment: the Academy Awards, Wimbledon, the Kentucky Derby, the Grammys, Miss America, the Indy 500, etc., all got to be in the spotlight. Everyone knew the latest entry in the cultural calendar, from which film won best picture to the latest horse to make a run at the Triple Crown. The Olympics were the focal point for society for a couple of weeks every four years, the big story across the networks and weekly magazines. 

Apart from the Super Bowl, it’s not clear if we have these unifying moments anymore. Patterns in Olympic fandom reveal the issue and shine a spotlight on future fandom building challenges.  

The next figure shows Olympic fandom data across the generations: Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z.

The data is striking.

There is a massive decline in Olympic fandom in younger generations. Baby Boomers have fandom rates over 20% for both the winter and summer games. For Gen Z it is about 10% for each.

The likely culprit? Older generations literally came of age during a different media world. Baby Boomers grew up in households sharing a television and a newspaper, they had to watch the Olympics because that was what was on. In contrast, Gen Z has a personal device that provides access to essentially infinite choices.

The Olympics are one of many “canaries in the coal mine” for cultural properties. What happens when technological developments create a fragmented media space that leads to much less communal consumption of culture? 

The Lessons

What’s our takeaway from all this?

• Fandom is about connection and community. If you want to build a fandom, you need to connect people. The Olympics do it naturally through the “we” of nationalism, but if you are a new sports team or cultural organization, it’s your core challenge.
• Not all potential fan segments are the same. The short-term, narrative-driven storytelling of the Olympics (combined with the built-in USA fandom) seems the best recipe for attracting female fans. If you want to build women’s sports, the strategy needs to be different.
• The future is uncertain. Gen Z and Gen Alpha are coming of age in a smartphone driven time of media fragmentation. It’s the opposite of the communal consumption experienced by older generations. Building fandom communities in the future will be a fundamentally different task.