Paris 2024 is off to wildly successful start when it comes to viewers, collectibles and wagering

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Bulls of the Week

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Despite a $1.5-billion US river clean-up campaign by the French government in the period leading up to Paris 2024, the water quality of the iconic Seine River has been one of the few real glitches of these Olympic Games. In so many other respects, the Paris Games have generated a bull market for France, the International Olympic Committee and media rights holders around the world, especially in Canada (CBC/Radio Canada, Rogers Sportsnet and TSN) and the United States (led by NBC and Peacock).

The show put on by the 10,714 athletes at Paris 2024 has the makings of as much of a media and financial success story as it has been esoteric and beautiful. These Games are becoming the most bet-on Olympics in history. They are also well on their way to setting new high-water marks in merchandising, trading cards and other signed collectibles. It is the television and video streaming audiences that have truly impressed, however, with the most-watched opening ceremonies in 12 years and more than 40 million Americans tuning in to the first Sunday of the Games.

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Make no mistake that those economic highlights are being made possible by the appeal of superstar athletes such as 17-year-old Canadian swimmer Summer McIntosh and Americans such as Simone Biles and Katie Ledecky. It’s only poetic that many of the headlines in the first full week of the Games have reflected the kind of tipping point year it’s been for women’s sports.

When it comes to tipping points, when all is said and done, watch for basketball to be among the big winners of these Paris 2024 Games. That’s true for men’s and women’s basketball in all its formats at these Olympics (5-on-5 and 3-on-3). The world’s second most accessible sport will only be that much bigger globally by the time the closing ceremonies come around Aug. 11, with wheelchair basketball still to come at next month’s Paralympics.

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Bears of the Week

While the Canadian women’s national soccer team found a way — well against the odds — of winning all three matches in Group A competition at Paris 2024 and advancing to the quarterfinals against Germany this weekend, their remarkable and inspired play hasn’t made the drone spying scandal go away for the Canadian Soccer Association.

Yes, Canada survived the deduction of a six-point penalty levied by FIFA as punishment for the wrong-headed use of drone-enabled videotaping of a closed New Zealand training session at Paris 2024 by the Canadian team’s coaching staff. Yet it is certainly not clear what if any further sanctions will come to be. What is clear is that the Olympic drone scandal is the last thing that Canada Soccer needed heading into what is the biggest opportunity the federation and the sport have ever had to transform the Canadian landscape of corporate support for soccer in the period leading to Canada’s co-hosting of the FIFA 2026 World Cup.

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What’s also clear is that both Canadian women’s head coach Bev Priestman and Toronto FC Major League Soccer head coach John Herdman — the former Canadian women’s and men’s national team head coach — have their reputational backs against the wall given their initial statements when the scandal first came to light.

Tom Mayenknecht is the host of The Sport Market on Sportsnet 650 on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. The Vancouver-based sport business commentator and principal in Emblematica Brand Builders provides a behind-the-scenes look at the sport business stories that matter most to fans. Follow Mayenknecht at: twitter.com/TheSportMarket.

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