After the final Olympic medals were awarded in Paris last Sunday, faithful and casual fans of various sports found themselves wanting in a way that’s typical when the Summer Games end. Olympic sports such as wrestling and track & field–to say nothing of the infamous debut of breaking–have historically had a dramatic falloff in attention because of the lack of professional leagues that keep their athletes top of mind.
However, the media and tech environments that these sports find themselves in today are not what they once were. Given the right circumstances, those sports have partners in their fight to remain relevant for a sustained period after the Olympics. Enter FloSports, which has provided a platform for amateur and low-level professional sports since 2006. Yet even FloSports is trying to figure out how to build that post-Olympics momentum.
“After the Olympics, you see LeBron (James), you see Steph (Curry), where you go watch them?,” said Ryan Fenton, FloSports’ general manager of track & field and running in a video interview. “You’re going to watch them during the NBA season; the product in basketball is the NBA. When you ask what’s the product in wrestling or what’s the product in track & field, that’s a really hard question to answer. If I’m more a casual fan that has built this interest from the Olympics and I want to go watch Noah Lyles or Grant Holloway or Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, where do I go do that next?”
Ideally, FloSports’ multiple verticals can answer those questions. Fenton named several major track events that are covered by FloTrack such as the Millrose Games in New York City, The Ten in Southern California and famed college meets. Yet he acknowledged that only diehard fans may keep such a calendar. “We are covering the sport 365 days a year, so we’re trying to keep the relevance and the stories of these athletes on the forefront and being talked about on a regular basis,” he said.
That year-round coverage is a point of pride for Travis Shives, FloSports’ vice president, who emphasized that one of the company’s advantages over larger media outfits is that it can spend more time covering Olympic sports on a regular basis as opposed to trying to carve out coverage space for those games next to those tied to multibillion dollar commitments to other professional leagues.
”The charge for us now is how do we leverage that Olympic moment,” said Shives in a video interview. “Not just for our business, but also for the broader sports. Our mission statement is ‘to grow our sports every day,’ so we really want to – pun intended – carry that flame forward.”
A significant part of the post-Olympics bump comes from an ongoing relationship with USA Wrestling. On Monday, FloSports will officially announce that it has extended an agreement with the organization through the Los Angeles Games in 2028, giving the company exclusive rights to not only stream USAW-sanctioned events but to produce films that spotlight athletes as they prepare for world championship events in the coming years.
“We will be working with USA Wrestling for the first time ever to deeply integrate our offerings into their membership and event offerings,” Shives said. “We want to leverage for our own business that Olympic bump, but also start to create value for the 350,000 members of USA Wrestling to more closely connect them to the elite athletes and engage with the content around those athletes.”
Shives said he thought that having reporters and company executives on location in Paris was crucial in building that post-Olympic leverage. “We had several days during the Olympic Games where we broke records within our own business in terms of social engagement on our platform. The work for us now is how do we take those audiences and not just for our own business, but for the sports, carry that forth and keep those folks engaged.”
Despite not having streaming rights to any event, FloSports sent a team of reporters to cover Paris, leading to that increased engagement during the Games. During the wrestling competitions between August 5 and August 11, Shives said that FloWrestling’s social media engagement set company records as well, with 59 million impressions and 1.7 million engagements. The associated site also reached 850,000 unique visitors.
Social media accounts for the FloTrack vertical garnered 137 million impressions, 18.2 million video views, and six million engagements (comments, reactions, saves and shares): all two-year highs. FloTrack’s website had nearly one million unique users, a record for a two-week period, according to the company. The numbers certainly came due to the star power in track.
FloSports will pick up exclusive rights to 14 of the 15 Wanda Diamond League events in 2025. The World Athletics-sponsored organization is essentially track & field’s pro league, although the best and biggest name athletes don’t always participate, dimming the spotlight on the sport. NBC has held the rights to the circuit since 2017, and even after the Diamond League moves to FloSports, the Comcast brand will retain exclusive rights to Prefontaine Classic that’s annually held at the University of Oregon. Through most of its run with Diamond League, NBC kept most events on its digital platforms, including Peacock, but select events such as the Prefontaine Classic have been broadcasted live on its networks.
FloSports’ smaller reach and its subscription prices have been major points of contention among those close to track & field, including stars like Gabby Thomas, who won a pair of gold medals in Paris. While she holds its journalistic coverage in high regard, she was concerned about accessibility to the streamer when she spoke to Sportico in April. It’s a criticism that both Shives and Fenton take to heart as they have engaged the track & field network since acquiring the future rights in April.
“We’re remembering those thoughts, and now we’re the network that has it,” Fenton said when explaining what FloSports is asking itself with the feedback. “How can we work with others out in the space, whether it be personalities, content creators, podcasters, others out there to help get these moments and these stories out there in a more significant way?”
In the short term, what does the company have in store to build off the Olympic zeitgeist? With track and field, FloSports will continue its editorial coverage of the Diamond League until it picks up the rights from NBC. It does have the reights to the Continental Tour which is the second-tier circuit after the Diamond League that includes The Ten event in California. FloSports also has partnerships with the Brooks, Puma and other brands where it can produce digital content that’s associated with its sponsor athletes.
Longer term, Shives said, “we want to grow our sports every day, and to do that, we have to meet our fans where they are, and we have to acknowledge not every moment of every fan’s life is going to be on Flo. It’s going to be on TikTok. It’s going to be on Instagram. It’s going to be on YouTube.”
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