The Olympics wants to be more relevant to a new generation of viewers.
So, the organizing committee went to Orange County—Lake Forest, more specifically—for guidance.
Action sports apparel and footwear maker Sole Technology Inc.’s founder and CEO Pierre André Senizergues is serving as an adviser to the 2024 Paris Olympics, ahead of the hand off to Los Angeles in 2028, where skate and surf will ostensibly come home to the epicenters of the brands, businesses and lifestyle movements the respective sports have inspired.
To that end, the Paris Games will see the introduction of what Senizergues described as more urban activities, an example being breakdancing, as other sports like karate are removed.
“The first step was skateboarding and surfing coming to the Olympics, and they’re doing this because they see way more people riding surfboards and doing skateboarding, and it’s something that’s growing very fast,” Senizergues told the Business Journal.
“It’s way more popular than some of the other sports. They want the average age to be younger than 50 watching the Olympics, and we saw right away how skateboarding changed the game [in Tokyo].”
In fact, the youngest athlete to win a medal at this summer’s 2020 Tokyo Olympics was 12-year-old Kokona Hiraki, who earned a silver in the women’s park final skate competition.
Sports like skateboarding skew younger. There’s also more camaraderie and community across riders competing against one another, which Senizergues said has changed the typically uber-competitive aspects of the Olympics.
The Culture Games
Senizergues wants to maintain the momentum coming off of skateboarding’s debut in the Tokyo Games while also building on the sport’s intersection with popular culture and youth movements.
“Culture is extremely important in France and they understand that when you have skateboarding in the Olympics, it’s a different beast; it’s not the same as a traditional sport,” Senizergues said.
“So, they wanted to get my view on how to integrate skateboarding with a very authentic view on it. For me, I told them I think what we can do is we can actually win the cultural game, which is more important. The goal of the Olympics is to unite everyone. So, we can win on the field or in the skate park and win in the streets.”
In other words, Paris is focused on appealing to more than just the die-hard sports fan and more of the mainstream.
Tapping Senizergues for his thoughts made sense. He grew up in the Parisian suburb of L’Hay Les Roses before coming stateside and has been skateboarding most of his life. He also runs one of the few remaining multi-brand action sports apparel companies in Orange County still wholly owned by its founder.
Sole Technologies’ portfolio includes action sports companies eS, Etnies, Emerica, Thirty Two and Altamont. Annual sales for the company are about $50 million.
Senizergues said he has proposed a number of projects now being considered for the Paris Games, including partnerships with museums for events before and after competitions.
A Template
Senizergues already has successful templates to work off of for Paris.
Some 25 years ago he brought his Etnies brand to the city, weaving in a number of public art projects and, of course, skateboarding. Fast forward to last month, he hosted a skate competition with Etnies for the Red Bull Paris Conquest in front of the Eiffel Tower, gleaning plenty of exposure for the sport following Tokyo.
It was a move symbolic of the blend between a very youth-oriented sport and a historical and iconic site where the 2024 Olympic medals will be awarded.
Senizergues recalled back in the day when skaters frequented the Jardins du Trocadéro, a site across from the Eiffel Tower with the Seine River cutting between the two, to hang out and skate.
“It’s where all the skaters used to go in the ’70s. It was the mecca of skateboarding,” Senizergues said of when he went there in 1977 to skate. “It’s very deep rooted in my DNA. Having a contest there, it’s like ‘Wow, dream come true.’”
Olympic Effect
With the Tokyo competition completed, Etnies goes back to OC a winner as Senizergues turns his attention to the next two Olympics.
“[Some] skateboarders were afraid that the Olympics is not skateboarding and it doesn’t represent skateboarding, and I think what happened is exactly the opposite,” the CEO said. “It didn’t change skateboarding. It’s more like skateboarding changed the Olympics.”
Because of the sport’s ease of access to a board and concrete, it’s oftentimes seen as a more democratic activity than others requiring more expensive gear and a specific venue—such as an equestrian facility or sailboat—to be able to participate.
Given the lack of barriers to entry, people across ages and genders are getting into skateboarding.
From a business perspective, Sole Technology orders are up for this year and next year, and the business is bouncing back in a strong way from last year’s lull.
The influx of girls and women into the sport has helped drive some of the business, complemented by the unisex trend that’s been happening in more recent years in fashion.
“It’s definitely bringing a lot more consumers to what we’re doing and we saw strong double-digit growth this year and next year will be double-digit growth,” Senizergues said.
OC 2028
While Paris is the focus in the near term, efforts around the 2028 Los Angeles Games are already ramping up. Scouts have been down in Orange County to check out Huntington Beach’s waves. The Honda Center in Anaheim will be the site of the volleyball competition in 2028. Water polo is expected to take place at the Orange County Great Park in Irvine.
And the trickle-over effect into the hotels and tourism industry will no doubt benefit places such as the Disneyland Resort, Knott’s Berry Farm and the region’s major malls and restaurant hubs, among other places.
“The Olympics is going to benefit L.A., Orange County, the United States in general,” Senizergues said. “The fact that Southern California is known as the mecca of skateboarding is going to be huge. It’s going to be an explosion.”
