The biggest winners of the 2024 Olympics will be the athletes who can break through on social media — not just get the gold

• The 2024 Olympics could be a bigger opportunity for brands and athletes than past games.
• Talent agents say brands are investing more in social media, including young and breakout athletes.
• Athletes who are savvy storytellers with strong engagement could benefit more than medalists.

The 2024 Olympic Games could be bigger than ever for athletes looking to build content careers and score brand deals, particularly for young or newer names.

Every four years, the Summer Olympics are a huge opportunity for brands to reach global fans through sport and for athletes to build names for themselves on one of the world's biggest stages.

Social media has created more of these opportunities for athletes and brands, and it's grown by leaps and bounds since the last Summer Games in Tokyo in 2021 and the Winter Olympics in 2022 — just look at the growth of TikTok as a platform for engagement and sponsored content.

"Social media, every single year, has gotten bigger and bigger, and a lot of eyes are on social, digital advertisements now," said Michael Raymond, the founder of Raymond Representation, which works with Olympic athletes, college athletes, and influencers.

James Crane, a talent agent at Buchwald, said he expects this year's Olympics to be a bigger gold rush for athlete brand deals because of the growth in spending on digital marketing. Brands want to work with savvy young athletes on social media and get a piece of the creator economy market , which is poised to approach half a trillion dollars by 2027, according to a Goldman Sachs forecast.

"This will be a very healthy market for a lot of these athletes," Crane said. "It's going to come down to the athletes obviously capitalizing in the spotlight … sharing their stories organically to the public to get people interested, to get brands interested."

Heading into the Paris Games, there are also fewer obvious superstars, aside from talents like US gymnast Simone Biles and US swimmer Katie Ledecky, which opens doors for breakout athletes to snag more of the spotlight. Past Olympics have had big stars across sports.

"This Olympics lacks a bit of the bigger star power that you've had in past Olympics," said Harry Poole, VP of marketing solutions at Excel Sports Management. "That's given an opportunity to probably some less familiar names to be a part of some of these Olympics rosters for sponsors."

While most national ad campaigns are planned well in advance of the Olympics and tend to require significant production time, social campaigns can be less expensive and more nimble, which also creates opportunities for lesser-known names.

Still, brands are getting more selective about who they work with on social campaigns.

"They've been getting a little bit pickier over the years as to who they want to work with," Raymond said. "That comes down to looking at engagement and audience and demographics and their sport and all these different things that the brands are looking at now."

Gymnasts Sunisa Lee and basketball player Hailey Van Lith, who each have more than 1 million followers on their main social platforms, are two of the most marketable college athletes competing in this year's games because of their reach, engagement, and audience data, according to an analysis by college-athlete-marketing company Out2Win.

Out2Win found that during the Tokyo Games, athletes and organizations created 232,000 social posts and gained 113 billion followers. As influencers and platforms lean in , the Paris Games could be even bigger for social media.

Athletes are creating content around the Olympics earlier to keep up with the demand

The increased demands on athletes to create content in and around the Olympics also means that social campaigns are starting earlier than they have in the past.

Agency Smith+Saint, which represents Olympians, including gymnasts Lee and Jade Carey, has been helping its athletes create and bank social content in the run-up to the Olympics so they can focus on training and competing during the games.

"Really it started quite a bit earlier for all of our athletes, in the strategy and insight that we were able to provide leading up to trials and leading up to qualification," said Kaila McWilliams, Smith+Saint's chief marketing officer. "And really aligning them with incredible brands that they are able to create content with and create content for ahead of the games that will then be sprinkled in throughout."

The International Olympic Committee has strict social-media guidelines for athletes competing in the games, as well, which include limitations on promoting brands that aren't official Olympic sponsors.

"One of the challenges in sponsoring Olympic athletes if you're not an Olympic sponsor is that your window to activate with your athlete is small," Poole said. "It puts the emphasis on making sure you're able to work with athletes to tell a story leading up to the games … and as soon as the blackout period is over."

Once again, the athletes best positioned in this environment are those who are strong storytellers.

"They are savvy on social, they're creative, and they have a knack, if you will, for storytelling," said Jeff Hoffman, a partner at sports-management firm ESM. "Those would be the ones who are going to do the best."