The best way to watch the Olympics is on TikTok

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

At prime time each night, NBC airs the day’s highlights from the Paris Olympics to tens of millions of people. Viewers have watched the US women’s gymnastics team clinch gold in a “redemption tour” after winning silver in Tokyo; they’ve been in awe when US swimmer Katie Ledecky finished a race, her competitors so far behind her that they’re not even in the frame.

But the most fascinating and eccentric Olympics coverage is happening on TikTok.

The appetite for Olympics content was evident before the opening ceremony. For weeks, the official Olympic and Paralympic accounts shared videos meant to get people excited across different social media platforms. The Olympics (and other sporting big events in general) thrive on the storylines: narratives like which teams are longtime rivals, what adversities have athletes faced, and what controversies have their sports had make for gripping television — and great marketing hooks. And along with these usual narratives and story arcs, TikTok has become a place for more offbeat or niche subplots, many of which have bubbled up organically from individual athletes and fans.

For example: have you heard about the chocolate muffins at the Olympic Village? The meme apparently started when Norwegian swimmer Henrik Christiansen posted a video rating various food items at the cafeteria and gave an obscenely gooey chocolate muffin an 11/10. He’s since made at least 10 videos about the Olympic muffins. Now people at the Olympics are running around looking for the muffins. They’re hunting down the actual brand of muffin and begging Costco to import them to the US. There is nothing deeper here other than a pastry that looks kind of good and a tech-savvy Olympian who figured out a good schtick, but people love it.

A swell of content about the Olympics isn’t unique to TikTok or the Paris Olympics. During the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, US women’s rugby player Ilona Maher gained a following on TikTok as she shared behind-the-scenes clips from the event. But Maher was an anomaly: her content did well because it was a novelty. Now, many TikTok users’ feeds are inundated with Olympics content not just from the Games’ biggest stars like Maher or gymnast Sunisa Lee. We’re also seeing try-on videos of Mongolia’s gorgeous team uniforms. People are making fan cams of handsome fencers set to K-pop songs. South Korean shooter Kim Yeji looks so cool that there are TikToks dedicated to her and GQ is writing articles about her style. The vibes are different this time.

TikTok’s global head of sports partnerships, Rollo Goldstaub, told The Verge in an email that the Paris Olympics have “all the right ingredients to be the biggest content moment in TikTok’s history.” In the first five days of the Tokyo Olympics, 29,000 posts used #olympics, according to Goldstaub. Compare that to the 521,000 #olympics posts in the first five days of Paris — more than 17 times the amount of content. So far, #olympics has been used in nearly 1 million videos.

To state the obvious, these Olympic Games are not like Tokyo, where athletes were isolated and venues were largely empty to stop the spread of the coronavirus. France is also just six hours ahead of New York — a much more manageable time difference than the 13 hours separating Japan and the East Coast.

NBC has reported a 79 percent jump in TV ratings for the Paris Olympics compared to Tokyo, in part driven by the streaming platform Peacock, which offers wall-to-wall coverage of the Games. The network has also hired a cadre of more than two dozen influencers to post content from the Olympics across social media including TikTok.

The state of the influencer and content creator industry has also changed since Tokyo, and athletes have cribbed some of the formats and styles TikTok views are used to. There are GRWM (get ready with me) clips of Olympians preparing for the opening ceremony; athletes are doing unboxing videos of their gear as if they’re sharing a Shein haul. It’s the same type of content that floods feeds every day, except in a remarkable setting. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the athletes continue to make influencer content after the Paris Olympics.

It’s clear that TikTok is on athletes’ minds, too. Moments after winning gold in the team event and still reveling in the joy, US gymnasts Lee and Simone Biles were overheard discussing which viral TikTok audio tracks they should use in videos. Imagine missing out on an Olympic medal and then pulling out your phone to make a video about it in meme format.

Mind you, this is the same company that is being pushed by the US government to divest or risk getting kicked out of the country. President Joe Biden signed the so-called TikTok ban bill in April, and though it’s still unclear where presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ policy stands, she has said the US needs to “deal with” its owner, ByteDance. Harris, like Biden and other politicians who have supported the TikTok forced divestment bill, recently joined the platform as her presidential campaign ramps up.

The push to force Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell off TikTok has been fraught: the details from classified briefings are still not public, even as some lawmakers have said the US must take “urgent action” against the company. Politicians who’ve voted to ban TikTok while building their profile on the platform have felt the wrath of users who say it’s hypocritical. And while the US must take national security threats seriously, lawmakers also have to contend with the enormous information apparatus built on TikTok — one that they, too, have helped to prop up.

TikTok is social media, television, a marketing channel, a shopping mall, a music app, a news platform, and now a 24/7 Olympics live feed. It will take lawmakers more than warning the public of the app’s reported dangers to reverse course.

Disclosure: Comcast, which owns NBCUniversal, is also an investor in Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company.