The Tokyo Olympics are different from other major sporting events due to the absence, in the competition fields, of any advertising brand (and the sponsors of the IOC alone are 15 big companies, from Airbnb to Visa). But they will be even more unique, in the summer of Wembley Stadium filled almost everywhere for the final of the European Football Championships, because there will be no fans in the stands: not even the parents, the mothers in the first place, of the athletes, whom a company, P&G, had made become the protagonists of an epochal commercial.
The Olympics have a founding motto. It dates back to 1908 and is not a phrase, as is believed, by the founder of the Games, Baron Pierre De Coubertin. On the contrary, it is a quote he made in 1908 for the first of the three London Olympics using the expression of an Anglican bishop of Pennsylvania: “The important thing is to participate”. Having said that the motto has a new value for these Resilience Games, the first to be held in an odd year, it must also be added that, after a hundred and more years, both the baron and the bishop should be corrected in a short but significant way: today, the important thing is to get involved. And so, not being able to bring anyone to Tokyo for the Games, Airbnb decided to bring the Games, and tourists, to the home of top sportsmen with online Experiences (airbnb.it)
Increasingly attentive to the experience market, before Covid disrupted everyone’s calendar and work, even in sport, Airbn’b had presented itself as a partner of the Olympic Committee siding alongside the athletes, guaranteeing them revenues simply by continuing to train. With the novelty that, by becoming hosts, or rather hosts, the same athletes could sell the experience of following them live, and perhaps of training with them, to fans from all over the world. Unfortunately, the program was blocked by Covid, but the agreement with the IOC lasts until 2028, and is also extended to other things: it aims to reduce the need to build new housing by exploiting the structures registered by Airbnb, it guarantees full accessibility to every residence that interests the Paralympic world.
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Exactly, the world. The Olympic world of 2021, the one in which and for which the important thing is to get involved, to give as many people as possible the possible to be involved in an event like the Olympics, the best sporting experience par excellence. So there are, for example, open the doors of their home to the fans Larry Bird, Scottie Pippen e Patrick Ewing, three Nba legends, members of the original Dream Team, the US national basketball team that brought the jewels of an NBA not yet as global as it is today to the Games in 1992. Bird to speak, who as a player was not a chatterer, about the Olympics and sports culture. Pippen for a time out on the eve of the final for the basketball tournament gold. Ewing to open his Dream Team scrapbook.
Of course, with the world that has to stay at home, it’s about online experiences. Furthermore, only US tourists can go to the home of the three basketball players, but they are a sign of how many and what riches are represented in the Olympics. More or less everyone knows the Dream Team, also because today the expression has come out of the basketball fields and identifies each special group, but special is also a direct contact with an athlete of the Refugee team to whom the IOC allows you to compete under its flag, the Syrian Yusra Maldini. Or the knowledge of Sky Brown, the very young Englishwoman who, on her return from Tokyo, will sit on the sofa to tell from home with her father the journey to Japan and the return from the first Games in which there were skateboard competitions, her discipline.
Experiences are, after all, a journey through time: past and future. It will be possible to visit, and have visitors, with some regret for the Olympics we gave up, the Rome of the Games of 60, but it will also be possible to reveal in advance the beauties of all the places that will host the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics. And for every athlete there will be the opportunity to grow an audience of fans. And the challenge is precisely this: to add a touch of Made in Italy to an offer that already covers 50 sports and 30 countries, but not ours. A conversation with Larry Bird, sold out quickly, cost $ 85. How much could an evening with Federica Pellegrini be worth talking about swimming in five different editions of the Games, and also about her passions such as tattoos and heels? You could gain something from it, but the host city would also have a great opportunity. It is enough to definitively correct Baron de Coubertin’s motto.
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