By Tom Ivan
The president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) says he wants to make sport more attractive to youngsters, but is facing a tough battle countering the popularity of videogames.
“Kids are attracted to visual, interactive forms of communication. It's not going to be easy for sport to counter that,” IOC president Jacques Rogge told The Times.
According to the report, the average age of an Olympic participant is 24, while the average age of an Olympic viewer is 46. Rogge said he will enlist the services of the 3,500 teenage athletes competing at the first Youth Olympic Games in 2010 in a bid to capture the hearts and minds of younger generations. He will ask each competitor to link a personal blog to social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.
“We need to hire more young people” in order to spread the Olympic gospel to under-18s, he said. “If they have baggy pants and pink hair, that's OK.
“You won't hear me saying sport is not fun - it is. But it requires austerity and discipline. The answer is achievement. You will never achieve in a videogame. It is not really success.”
Despite the body’s desire to steer youth away from games and toward sport, earlier this year the IOC’s exclusive licensee, International Sports Multimedia (ISM), struck a deal with Sega to publish Beijing 2008 (pictured), the official videogame of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Slated for release on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC in July, the Eurocom developed title will feature over 35 events with online and offline gameplay.
