An overwhelming majority of people in the world either don’t know or don’t care that the Winter Olympics are under way in Milan-Cortina. But it doesn’t have to be that way. There are plenty of globally popular indoor sports—from ping-pong to martial arts—that are easy to play on a snowy day. Why not balance things out and bring some of them to the Winter Olympics?
Something needs to change. The panjandrums at the International Olympic Committee (IOC) might want you to think the Games are going very well. Viewership for the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics appears to have bounced back from the dismal numbers that plagued Beijing in 2022. NBC reported a 34 percent increase in viewership for the opening ceremony, while European broadcasters posted record audiences in France, Norway, and Italy for various events. The IOC boasted that its own polling showed 90 percent of international viewers approved of the opening ceremony. And that includes viewers in India, Indonesia, and Mexico.
An overwhelming majority of people in the world either don’t know or don’t care that the Winter Olympics are under way in Milan-Cortina. But it doesn’t have to be that way. There are plenty of globally popular indoor sports—from ping-pong to martial arts—that are easy to play on a snowy day. Why not balance things out and bring some of them to the Winter Olympics?
Something needs to change. The panjandrums at the International Olympic Committee (IOC) might want you to think the Games are going very well. Viewership for the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics appears to have bounced back from the dismal numbers that plagued Beijing in 2022. NBC reported a 34 percent increase in viewership for the opening ceremony, while European broadcasters posted record audiences in France, Norway, and Italy for various events. The IOC boasted that its own polling showed 90 percent of international viewers approved of the opening ceremony. And that includes viewers in India, Indonesia, and Mexico.
But a closer look shows those figures aren’t especially impressive. Much of the rebound of viewership in Europe and North America and is down to the fact that Milan prime time for Europe and only six hours ahead of the U.S. East Coast—versus Beijing’s 13-hour difference. This is great for broadcasters. But it doesn’t reflect any fundamental shift in the appeal of the Winter Olympics, which barely stretches past the Tropic of Cancer.
What’s more, the IOC survey only captured people who actually watched the opening ceremony. It doesn’t reveal anything about the billions who didn’t tune in at all. The survey cited South Korea, which has a tradition of winter sports and hosted the 2018 Winter Olympics. But that year’s opening ceremony drew a viewer rating of just 1.8 percent—the weakest Olympic broadcast ever recorded in the country. If the Winter Games can’t sustain the interest of a nation that invested billions to host less than a decade ago, then what hope is there for countries that have never had a Winter Olympic medalist? Sub-Saharan Africa’s main broadcaster dropped coverage entirely due to cost cutting. Much of Latin America gets YouTube streams instead of premium TV deals. And who can blame them: Even Olympics.com com was unsure whether Indians could watch, reporting: “Live telecast or live broadcast of the Milano Cortina 2026 events is not confirmed on TV channels in India.”
We may have to wait until after the closing ceremony to know the final viewership figures from countries in the warmer latitudes. But it’s a safe bet that the data will show that the global south remains largely immune to the spectacle of (mostly) European and North American athletes playing in the snow and ice.
Snow and ice bring up a second-order problem: There’s not enough of it anymore. Climate change means that most cities that previously hosted the Winter Olympics can no longer do so reliably. According to an IOC-commissioned study, by the 2050s, only 52 of 93 potential host cities will have adequate climate conditions. Never mind the future. In 2022, Beijing used 100 percent artificial snow—hardly a “Winter” Olympics at all. Milan Cortina will require more than 3 million cubic yards of manufactured snow despite being staged in the Italian Alps. Artificial snowmaking now consumes 67 percent of ski resort energy during peak season, creating a perverse feedback loop: Climate change necessitates more artificial snow, which burns more fossil fuels, which accelerates climate change.
So, the Winter Games, for all the hoopla surrounding Milan Cortina, face an uncertain future—geographic irrelevance coupled with environmental unsustainability.
The IOC has been oddly passive about both crises. There’s no strategy to make the Winter Olympics relevant to the billions of people who live in warm climates—just some token scholarships to train in Europe. There’s no acknowledgment that viewership is collapsing even in winter sports strongholds. The IOC’s response to the irrelevance of the Winter Olympics has been to shrug and hope the problem solves itself. It won’t.
But I have a modest proposal—and a more ambitious one—for those Olympic panjandrums.
Both proposals involve moving sports from the bloated Summer Games roster to the Winter Games. Many summer Olympic sports are weather-agnostic and must be played in climate-controlled settings anyway. If the IOC and global audiences are comfortable with competition on artificial snow and ice, then accepting sports that require no frozen water at all is only a small leap.
The modest version: Move sports that emphasize aesthetics as much as athletics to the winter roster. Rhythmic gymnastics and artistic swimming are performed in climate-controlled indoor facilities—just like figure skating. They’d fit seamlessly alongside the Winter Games’ existing aesthetic events. Add diving, fencing, trampoline, sport climbing, and shooting (which already plays a small role in the Winter Games via biathlon). These are indoor sports that don’t require particular weather conditions. They are contested by athletes who are, for the most part, fully clothed—like their peers in the traditional winter competitions.
The more ambitious version: all the above, plus ping-pong and badminton—sports with monster followings in Asia. At the delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympics, table tennis, as ping-ping is officially called, drew 350 million Chinese viewers—making it China’s most-watched Olympic sport. At the 2016 Rio Olympics, Badminton dominated the most-watched events on Chinese state television. These sports are massive in Indonesia, Malaysia, India, South Korea, and Japan—precisely the markets where the Winter Olympics struggle for relevance.
If the IOC wants to go whole-hog, throw in martial arts of judo and taekwondo, as well. These, too, are indoor sports that involve fully clothed athletes, and they have a huge following in the global south.
Even the most ambitious plan would leave the Summer Games with plenty of sports that draw eyeballs. Athletics, swimming, basketball, soccer—these are the ratings juggernauts. The Summer Olympics would still feature more than 25 sports and more than 8,000 athletes, hardly a hollowed-out shell. (The addition of cricket to the roster for the 2028 Olympics will bring billions of eyeballs, especially from South Asia.) Meanwhile, moving just table tennis and badminton to the Winter Olympics could add hundreds of millions of Asian viewers overnight, transforming the Games from a Northern Hemisphere club into a genuinely global event.
This proposal doesn’t solve the problem of artificial ice and snow, but fixing climate change exceeds the IOC’s remit. When Beijing used fully manufactured snow, the IOC effectively admitted that winter is a vibe, not a season. The absurdity of trucking millions of cubic yards of artificial snow into the Alps might seem less absurd if the Winter Olympics weren’t entirely dependent on frozen water.
The alternative is watching the Winter Olympics slowly fade into geographic and demographic irrelevance—becoming a boutique event for wealthy snow countries while the rest of the world tunes out. The IOC can continue to shrug or it can get creative. Indoor sports won’t save winter, but they might just save the Winter Olympics.
