Commercials Galore?
I remember when I was 10 years old and just entering the world of swimming, I saw this Speedo advertisement featuring Michael Phelps. It was so inspiring to hear Michael say that no matter where you come from you can be a good swimmer. This ad came out around the time when the 2008 Olympics were becoming more relevant in the media. This ad and the way swimming was portrayed in the Olympics are two reasons as to why I started to love this sport.
Like I mentioned in my last blog post, swimming is one of the most popular sports in the Olympics, but in non-Olympic years people tend to forget about it. That can be proven by the multiple swimming ads that are shown leading up to the Olympics, like this Ryan Lochte ad and this Missy Franklin ad, and the lack of ads there seems to be in the 3 years before the next Olympics.
The multiplicity of commercials featuring swimming that appear in the year leading up to the Olympics provide a lot of revenue for the sport, but when compared to other sports who have yearly popular events swimming is lacking greatly in the field of economics. Especially when it comes to commercials.
Money Making Sports
When compared to other sports, like football or soccer, swimming does not make nearly as much money. For example, in 2013 the National Football League’s revenues were over $9 billion. All of these soccer teams are making millions of dollars a year. In 2012 this article showed that the USA Swimming Foundation raises on average $100 million a year, which is a big number but is significantly lower than the revenues of other sports. Another interesting fact is that $16 million of that $100 million goes to supporting US national team swimmers.
Many can argue sports that are broadcasted through many different forms of media, like football and soccer run in the “profit driven system called capitalism” (Vivian 57). The book called The Media of Mass Communications defines capitalism as “an economic system with private owners operating trade and industry for profit” (Vivian 57). Football and soccer are widely shown in visual and print media forms and aim at entertaining a certain audience while swimming is not portrayed in really any kind of media (excluding social) until the time of the Olympics.
1213 Days to Wait
In 1213 days the 2020 Summer Olympics will start in Tokyo, Japan, and personally I cannot wait. I can’t wait for my favorite sport to be back in the spotlight again especially since it’s beneficial for both the entertainment and advertisement industry. From now until then, it will be fascinating to see more sports in the spotlight and how they do economically.
I want to end this post with an Under Armor commercial from the 2016 Olympics that truly shows swimming’s ability to sell itself in advertisements. It also highlights what it is like exactly to be a swimmer.
Keep calm and swim on,
MB
Sources:
The Media of Mass Communications
Forbes
Fortune
How has media affected sports? 
I have never really thought about the popularity of swimming only during the time of the Olympics, but it is so true! There is so much hype around swimming during this time and it seems that it is most people’s favorite sport to watch. Although there is not much swimming advertising between each Olympics, are there other major worldwide swimming events? If there is, it is surprising that it does not get more coverage and advertising since it is a popular sport.
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I love reading your posts because I think swimming and volleyball are similar in so many ways. They both are background sports with a few key players that are recognized all year round and make each sport as popular as they are. It’s hard to compete with soccer and football and basketball, so it’s great that the Olympics provide swimming with the attention it deserves. It’s true that there are some awesome swimming commercials out there, and it’s interesting that you can kind of predict when they’ll be released based on the Olympics.
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