Michael Phelps: Everywhere, All the Time

I think the Olympics are kind of weird.

Truthfully, I’ve never been able to get a handle on them as a sports fan. My patriotism is probably best described as “lukewarm,” so the national pride angle doesn’t really do it for me. The broadcast schedules are weird, so it’s hard to watch much of the competition. The number of events is staggering, and they keep adding new ones all the time — BMX biking is now an Olympic event — so it’s hard to know which ones to follow. According to Wikipedia, there are 302 events this year.

That number surprised me, because I was under the impression that there were just eight events this summer, and Michael Phelps was competing in all of them.

I find NBC’s promotion of Phelps fascinating. The network spent $894 million for the Olympic broadcast rights ($52.6 million a day), and will spend another $125 million producing the games, so they definitely want to make sure people are watching.

To ensure this, NBC has run 476,000 promos (source: hyperbole) featuring Phelps and his chase for eight gold medals. Every time you tune into NBC, Phelps is there. During the morning shows, there he is; while watching the Wimbledon finals, there he is; while watching Leno, there he is; digitally inserted into re-runs of The Office, there he is.

But do we, as American people, actually care about Michael Phelps? It seems that media outlets have taken the Phelps story and run with it, much to NBC’s delight. I saw an article today where the writer was pondering if Phelps was the new Tiger Woods. He’s not, of course, since he’s only relevant once every four years and will be past his prime by the time the 2012 Olympics roll around, meaning the nation will watch Phelps compete for about 10 days during his entire swimming career.

Regardless, the swimmer is everywhere these days, and his omnipresence will only intensify in the month leading up to Beijing. They’ve moved the swimming coverage to prime-time, and they’re hoping that his chase for a record eight gold medals will be enough to get viewers to tune in for more of the Olympics. That NBC has pumped up their promotion of him to such a dizzying amount reminds me of when ESPN, which had never cared about NASCAR, acquired the broadcast rights to the sport and suddenly began promoting it at every turn. And some people actually started to care about NASCAR. Just because it was there.

Like ESPN did with racing, NBC is basically telling you what’s important. They’re creating the news by forcing you to be interested in Michael Phelps. You don’t have a choice at this point. For the next six weeks, Phelps will be the biggest sports story in the world. If you like sports, you’ll have to pay attention or you’ll be left behind.

The network has referred to this Olympics as their “billion dollar experiment” and will be providing coverage of the events online and via mobile phone, too. There will be online streaming, Web exclusives, blogging, downloads and games to play. It’s a bonanza! Or something like that.

Credit NBC for expanding their offerings and really using this as an opportunity to learn more about how people like to receive information. I’m guessing that they’ll find out a lot of stuff, not the least of which is that the viewing public will soak up anything if they’re told it’s important over and over again.

Keep that in mind when the 2010 Vancouver features nothing but promos for a 28-year-old skicross athlete who will be chasing two gold medals and a bronze, in spite of the untimely death of her pet macropod.

Don’t tell me you won’t watch.

Tags: branding, michael phelps, olympics