Pro Athletes Need to Be More Than Just Athletic

Speed isn't enough to elevate the sport—as running influencers prove, connecting with fans is all about storytelling.

A week ago, the California International Marathon posted an Instagram slideshow highlighting the race’s most-tracked participants. Of the eight runners they included, only one was a professional (that would be CJ Albertson). The rest were influencers, including “hybrid athlete” and supplement company founder Nick Bare in the top spot, Expntl Athletics owner Caitlyn Miller, and photographer Eric Floberg.

“In other words, semi-fast runners who invested in telling their own stories are more interesting to running fans than merely fast runners,” Mike Ko, AKA Kofuzi, wrote in response on an Instagram Story. 

While running as an activity is at an all-time high in terms of popularity, interest in elite competition doesn’t generate the same kind of fandom as football, baseball, or basketball. 

The majority of runners don’t tend to watch national and international-level competitions (it’s a chicken-or-egg issue—it’s hard to find coverage, but if no one’s watching, media companies aren’t going to invest in it). For comparison’s sake, NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” package averages 22 million viewers, while the channel’s Sunday afternoon coverage of the World Track & Field Championships in 2022 averaged 2.235 million TV-only viewers, according to an NBC press release (on the plus side, that was the most-watched Track & Field event on the network in 18 years, excluding the Olympics and U.S. Team Trials, and up 192 percent versus the network’s average viewership of the last World Championships in 2019).

And professional runners don’t drive revenue the same way big-name athletes do in other sports. Case in point: Nike’s Jordan Brand brought in $5.1 billion in 2022, according to Front Office Sports (Michael Jordan! The OG influencer!). While I don’t have sales figures to prove my point here, I am preeeetty confident that the brand’s EK Umoja Collection—a capsule of running footwear and apparel inspired by the GOAT marathoner Eliud Kipchoge—did not come close to touching that.

To Ko’s point, I think storytelling is key to growing interest in the sport. Look at Netflix’s Formula 1: Drive to Survive: That show helped grow the number of American F1 fans from 44.9 million in 2019 to 49.2 million in 2022, according to one Nielsen study, and it’s provided “a halo effect that’s boosted live race viewership on ABC and ESPN networks—which are enjoying F1 sponsorship revenue gains,” an article in The Athletic reported. 

Could getting the Netflix treatment do the same for running? This summer, the streaming platform will debut a documentary series that followed elite track and field athletes as they prepared for the World Championships. The description promises “an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the high stakes, and mental toughness of the sprinters who devote their entire lives to crossing the finish line in record time, where their professional futures are decided in just fractions of a second.

There’s no doubt that kind of mainstream coverage could be a boon for the sport, but so is storytelling on a much smaller scale. The influence industry is lucrative: A “micro-influencer” with 15,000 to 75,000 Instagram followers can reasonably expect to charge between $2,000 to $8,000 per sponsored post, according to Impact.com, while “macro-influencers” with 250,000 to 1 million followers can negotiate $20,000-$50,000 per sponsored Instagram post, a recent Trail Runner article reported. While a small number of professional runners garner that type of money in athletic sponsorship deals,” author Hannah Belles wrote, “it is certainly not the norm, and those athlete contracts come with the burden of reduction clauses and performance incentives.”

At this point, professional athletes should consider themselves influencers—and treat storytelling as part of their job. Being athletic simply isn’t enough. “Increasingly, brands are interested in—and in some cases demanding—more from athletes than just podium finishes or fast times,” Belles wrote. “They’re looking for a partnership relationship that incorporates the ‘Three Ps” of athlete influence: performance, personality, and (social media) production.’”

Look at Olympic bronze medal marathoner Molly Seidel, who has a contract with Puma and consistently entertains her 238K Instagram followers with relatable Reels that show the sillier side of elite training, but shares a more serious side on her podcast, The Build Up. Similarly, Boston Marathon Champion and two-time Olympian Des Linden, who runs for Brooks and has 203K followers, has turned her podcast into an opportunity to connect with fans IRL during major marathon weekends. Olympian and World Champion sprinter Noah Lyles is sponsored by Adidas, has 536K Instagram followers, and has made a name for himself off the track with his sense of style. 

Lululemon is a great example of a brand that’s supporting athletes who are already excelling at storytelling: Camille Herron, Colleen Quigley, and Nikki Hilitz all struck up partnerships with the brand after building significant followings, and they’ve elevated Lululemon within the running space as a result. 

Because they have the ability to connect with audiences in an authentic, genuine way that can develop a really strong fan base, pro athletes can be incredibly valuable to brands as influencers. But that kind of a relationship is a two-way street, especially for newer pros. “Imagine if brands provided better storytelling support to their athletes,” Ko wrote on Instagram. Social media management is a full-time job, and if you’re not naturally good at or well-versed in what works, it can be overwhelming. Athletes should be educated by their agents and brand partners—and given unfettered access to the tools they need, including photos and videos—because the ROI benefits all parties. 

Social media gives them an opportunity to control their own narrative, develop opportunities within and outside of their sport, and show their humanity. And helping them do that benefits not just the brands that work with them, but the sport as a whole.

the rundown

New Balance Fuelcell Rebel v4
It’s not often that I wax poetic about a lower stack shoe without a carbon plate, but New Balance’s Fuelcell Rebel v3 was one of my favorite uptempo trainers and I was super pumped to try the brand-new Rebel v4, which will be released on March 1. It’s got that eye-catching angular geometry New Balance is using for all their Fuelcell updates, and the brand-new midsole, made from a PEBA/EVA blend, is a little beefier than the last iteration (the stack height has increased from 27.5 millimeters under the heel to 30, and there’s a wider platform underfoot). But it shed half an ounce, and feels even lighter thanks to the airy engineered mesh upper (pro tip: do not wear these in sub-zero temperatures). The fit did feel a little roomier, which took away a bit of the snappiness I liked about the last version, but overall, I really liked how comfortable they felt whether I was running easy or picking up the pace.

Does Gamification In Health and Fitness Apps Actually Increase Physical Activity?
Ever wonder why every fitness device and app is constantly pushing digital badges and trophies, celebratory animations, and haptic buzzes? It’s because those little rewards trigger our brain to release dopamine, which makes us want to do whatever earned those rewards again and again (yes, I am one of those people who use to do jumping jacks in my apartment to close my Apple Watch activity ring). And that does motivate us to move more: Using points, levels, rewards, leaderboards, narratives, and teams increased daily step count and overall physical activity, a 2022 meta-analysis published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research found.

“Nike races to keep from losing ground to more nimble rivals,” Financial Times 
I unfortunately don’t have a gift link to this Financial Times article (although registration is free!), but I’ll summarize it here because I think it’s an interesting look at how this once-dominant company is now having to compete for consumers—specifically in running. Apparently, Nike is losing ground not just to long-time competitors like Adidas, but also newcomers including Hoka and On. A lot of it has to do with the carbon plated shoe market; Nike pioneered this category with the original Vaporfly, but most brands have caught up in the last four years and Nike hasn’t yet brought another gamechanger to market. CEO John Donahoe says the everyday running category is where Nike has the most work to do, and recent restructuring and cost-cutting is allowing the company to reinvest in the running and women divisions. I’ll be excited to see what the Swoosh has to offer…

Garmin HRM-Fit
You probably know chest straps are more reliable than wristwatches when it comes to heart rate, but wearing one under a sports bra kind of sucks. Enter: Garmin’s just-released HRM-Fit. Instead of wrapping around the torso, it clips directly onto a sports bra via three anchor points, and you can barely feel it while you’re running. I don’t have access to an ECG, so I can’t tell you exactly how accurate it is, but my average heart recorded by the HRM-Fit, Oura Ring, and COROS Pace 3 over the course of a run was with three beats per minute—not bad. I don’t generally train by heart rate, but I’m sure any female runner who does will appreciate how much more comfort this offers than any other chest straps out there right now.