Athletes, New Audiences Drive Olympic Agenda Renewal

(ATR) In a bid to keep the Olympics relevant and growing, the IOC is on its way to adopting a wide range of policy directives being called Olympic Agenda 2020+5.

Spread across 37 pages, the recommendations are divided into 15 categories, beginning with preserving the unique nature of the Olympics to finding new revenue sources for the IOC.

The new proposals are an affirmation of a number of key points from Olympic Agenda and a call for additional actions.

Digital gaming, at least games that involve physical exertion, should be considered for the Olympic program, says one of the proposals. Olympic Agenda 2020 opened the door with its proposal to begin discussions on how to include the expanding world of digital sport in the Games.

Athlete involvement in the leadership and decision making in Olympic sport is furthered in the +5 agenda with a recommendation to create an Athletes Department within the IOC corporate structure.

The athlete proposals stress the need for athlete participation to grow in the administration of sport. Attention should be paid to the overall well-being of athletes and their rights, including the ability to protest.

The concept of sustainable Olympics, a key part of Olympic Agenda 2020, now includes the experience of Tokyo 2020 and its dealing with the effects of COVID19 and the intense efforts well before the pandemic to avoid building new venues.

Under the rubric of new revenue sources, the "Road to the Olympics"should become part of the branding for the Games. Qualifying events for the Games should include marketing rights for the NOCs and the sport governing bodies. New ways of holding qualifying events that include a group of sports should be considered.

The Agenda+5 proposals address governance issues for sport organizations, especially for the impact problems create for the finance, credibility and image of sport. "Full transparency" is demanded over the use of resources.

In the realm of virtual sport, the IOC proposal says the growing popularity of virtual sport should be leveraged "to promote the Olympic Movement, Olympic values, sports participation and grow direct relations with youth".

And the Agenda+5 proposal signals that the Holy Grail of reaching the Olympic program is possible for digital sport.

"Consider the addition of physical virtual sports in the Olympic Programme in cooperation with the respective IFs," says the proposal.

Acknowledgement of the impact of digital media upon the Olympics is contained throughout the IOC recommendations. The IOC regards digital media as a path towards growing public attention and involvement.

In a major development for the IOC digital strategy, there is a proposal to create a single "people-centric" internet site, Olympics.com. That site would include the Olympic Channel as the sports video section and merge the other websites and apps into the single platform.

Institutional news and information about the work of the IOC would be contained on IOC.org.

Reported by Ed Hula.