In the Olympic Village in Seine-Saint-Denis, athletes wander around in their team colours, their long, lean limbs striding out along the banks of the Seine. A pair of Hungarian Olympians in matching sports gear canoodle on a giant beanbag, a Dutch marathon runner talks patiently to a journalist, and impossibly perfect young women from the Greek water polo team make their way towards the onsite supermarket.
It is a hermetically sealed enclave with heavily guarded entry points, which has traditionally been off-limits to all but these Olympic demi-gods. What happened in the village stayed in the village. That is, at least, until TikTok came along.
Now, viewers desperate for a glimpse of Olympian life can devour hours of content, from gymnastic rock star Simone Biles (4.9 million followers, 66.5m likes) sharing her pre-routine nerves (and make-up routine) before the Olympic all around final, to Tom Daley (1.6 million followers, 18.3m likes) trying out the athletes’ cardboard beds. Or, if the mood takes them, slow motion footage of the moment a French pole-vaulter’s penis got caught on the bar, costing him Olympic gold (Anthony Ammirati’s TikTok response to the story – an image of him staring into the middle distance with the words: “POV: When you make more of a buzz for your package than your performance” – has been watched 7.5m times).
In the Village Plaza the French table tennis player Audrey Zarif – whose video about her arrival at the Olympic village has 3.2m views and counting – raises her eyebrows when asked why she posts on TikTok. “For the money,” she says, laughing. “But it’s not just that, I want people to see what we are doing. We get a lot of support from people on social media and I also like to dance and make videos.”
There is also the money, though. Zarif went from having 2,000 followers to 10,000 when she started posting content about life on the French Olympic table tennis team. Now, if a video she posts is watched 1m times for at least five seconds, she is rewarded.
“The videos help sports like table tennis that people don’t know very well,” she adds. “We want to show the world that it’s a difficult sport. So it’s exposure for me and exposure for the sport.” Sources at TikTok confirmed athletes can choose to join its “Creativity Program”, that generates money for the most popular creators, but said they were not being contracted by TikTok to produce content.
Proxy wars abound at the Olympics, and in 2024 none has been fiercer than the battle for social media engagement. But as Paris 2024 moves towards the closing ceremony there can be little doubt that Chinese-owned TikTok – facing a ban in the US over concerns data from its 170m US users could be accessed by the Chinese state – has dominated the picture here as comprehensively as Chinese divers owned the Aquatics Centre in Saint-Denis.
According to figures from TikTok, 43,590 users posted content using the hashtag #Olympics on the platform on the opening day of Paris 2024 – compared to 3,151 in Tokyo in 2021, a 1,283% increase.
By the middle of the final week of the Games 1.3m Olympics-related videos had been posted on the platform – a 1,828% increase on the 67,000 made at the same point in Tokyo.
TikTok is only six years old. While athletes such as USA rugby player Ilona Maher were experimenting with the platform in Tokyo, they have gone to a new level in Paris. Maher’s posts (including riffs on the idea of the Olympic Village as the Love Island villa) have garnered 95m likes from her more than a million followers.
None of this is by accident. TikTok paid Team GB an unspecified amount of money to become an official partner at these Games. As a result, at the end of every kitting session each athlete was given training on what kind of videos worked best – hence a rash of not entirely organic “haul” videos (where social media users show off freebies) of Olympians posting videos of themselves unboxing sponsored kit.
For Rollo Goldstaub, the app’s head of sports partnerships, it has been a worthwhile investment. “[It’s] 100% worth every investment, because we want to see the most broad and diverse and joyful content on TikTok, and I think we’ve got that as a result,” he says. Goldstaub says it’s also a mutually beneficial partnership – sports largely ignored outside of the Olympics can gain a new audience, while athletes who may struggle for funding can build a personal brand, leading to external brand deals and sponsorship.
Browsing the eye-wateringly expensive merchandise in the Olympic Village official shop, the Ukrainian canoe sprint team, who came fourth in the 500m kayak quadruple sculls final – say the platform has helped Ukrainians learn about the sport. “Many people confuse rowing with canoeing,” says Ihor Trunov with a sigh. “So it helps people understand what we do.”
But like the multiple posts of French crowds delighting in Léon Marchand’s successes (including sublime multi-screen footage of enforced stoppages at the tennis and the fencing while the French crowds celebrated his 200m butterfly gold), their posts also have another function: to spread joy. “That’s important right now,” says Ivan Semykin. “Many people now defend our country, many people stay in our cities – so we want to give them something to make them smile.”
Paris 2024’s most delectable TikTok Trends
The Muffin Man You may not be an avid follower of Norwegian swimming, but if you are deep into Olympic TikTok you’ll have undoubtedly come across Henrik Christiansen, whose videos declaring his love of the chocolate muffin available in the Olympic village, sparked ChocolateMuffinTok; other athletes have run with the trend.
“I guess we’ll never know” One of the best Olympic trends on TikTok sees gold medalists miming to Kanye West’s Grammy acceptance speech. “Everybody wanted to know what I would do if I didn’t win,” they mouth, before bringing their medal into the picture, and adding: “I guess we’ll never know.” Simone Biles, as well as being the GOAT on the mat, is unsurprisingly the master of the genre.
Léon Marchand fever By now, everyone has seen the footage of Léon Marchand becoming the greatest swimmer in France’s history, but watching crowds in France lose their minds as he crosses the line in fan parks, in bars, in the Grand Palais, at Roland Garros and at the Stade de France has been a delight to behold. (A notable mention for LeBron James who thought the crowd were cheering for him, pardon LeBron).
“Je suis Matrixé!” Before the Games there was a lot of chat among Parisians about how the Games would be a total disaster, with many people deciding to flee the French capital. Some who remained are taking a lot of pleasure from talking about how spectacular the Games have been, including a classic from the comedian Antek: “I was one of those who said, ‘ohhh Paris, it’s going to be shit, it’s going to be cataclysmic’,” he says. “A few weeks later I cried in front of the ping pong.” What’s French for schadenfreude?
Aura Turkish sports shooter Yusuf Dikec, has won a legion of new fans on TikTok thanks to his seemingly nonchalant approach to these Games. While other competitors wore Inspector Gadget visual apparatus, Dikec opted to wear his run-of-the-mill prescription glasses and shoot with one hand in his pocket. It’s an aura.
