Bored by Biathlon? The Winter Games Need Ping Pong.

Milan-Cortina’s slopes may be buzzing, but beyond the Alps the Winter Olympics are skating on dangerously thin ice. While the International Olympic Committee touts a 34 percent jump in U.S. opening-ceremony ratings and record audiences in France, Norway and Italy, those headline numbers mask a chillier truth: most of the planet either does not know or does not care that the Games are happening at all.

The rebound, analysts note, owes less to renewed passion for ski jumps and luge than to favorable time zones. Milan is six hours ahead of the U.S. East Coast—far kinder to broadcasters than Beijing’s 13-hour lag in 2022. European record ratings are welcome, yet they do little to thaw the Winter Games’ frosty reputation across Latin America, Africa and much of Asia, where broadcasters have scaled back or abandoned coverage entirely. Sub-Saharan Africa’s main network dropped the event for budget reasons; Indian viewers still do not have confirmed television access; Latin American audiences rely largely on YouTube streams.

Even winter-sport strongholds show cracks. South Korea, host of the 2018 PyeongChang Games, posted an all-time low 1.8 percent rating for that opening ceremony. If a nation that built billion-dollar venues can’t sustain interest, Olympic leaders must confront an uncomfortable reality: the Winter Games are drifting toward geographic and demographic irrelevance.

Environmental trends add urgency. Climate-change researchers commissioned by the IOC project that by the 2050s only 52 of 93 former host cities will be reliably cold enough. Beijing 2022 already required 100 percent artificial snow; Milan-Cortina will deploy more than three million cubic yards of man-made powder, consuming energy equivalent to two-thirds of a ski resort’s peak-season total. Each flake deepens the carbon footprint, accelerating the very warming that threatens winter sport.

Rather than watch the quadrennial festival shrink into a niche gala for snow-rich nations, commentators are urging the IOC to rethink what “winter” means. A growing chorus suggests transplanting popular indoor summer disciplines—sports that demand climate-controlled arenas, not glaciers—to the February program. Rhythmic gymnastics, artistic swimming, diving, fencing, trampoline, sport climbing and shooting could slide seamlessly beside figure skating and ice hockey, proponents argue, broadening appeal without building a single ski lift.

The bolder blueprint calls for Asia’s television juggernauts: table tennis and badminton. At Tokyo 2020, table tennis drew 350 million viewers in China alone, making it the nation’s most-watched Olympic sport; badminton dominated Chinese airtime during Rio 2016. Both sports command enormous followings across Indonesia, Malaysia, India, South Korea and Japan—markets where winter ratings lag. Add judo and taekwondo, the logic goes, and the Winter Games could instantly gain hundreds of millions of eyeballs.

Such shifts would leave the Summer Olympics flush with marquee staples—athletics, swimming, basketball, soccer—while the Winter edition evolves into a truly global hybrid. Critics may scoff at ping-pong medals beside moguls, but the IOC already accepted artificial snow as a norm; accepting indoor arenas is a smaller leap.

Without creative expansion, warns geopolitics analyst Bobby Ghosh, the Winter Olympics risk becoming “a boutique event for wealthy snow countries while the rest of the world tunes out.” Indoor sports cannot reverse climate change, but they might just keep the Olympic flame flickering brightly across continents that have never owned a bobsled.

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