AS SPORTS JOURNALISTS we all fear a future where influencers and celebrities push us out of the media landscape, but to be honest, The 42 had never considered the prospect of Snoop Dogg stepping onto our turf.
Yet there he was on our phone the other morning, waxing lyrical about rugby’s golden boy, Antoine Dupont. Safe to say this writer would have felt more confident about a potential job-swap before clicking the play button.
“I need him as a running back,” Snoop declares. “He’s got wheels, he deals, he falls, he spills!”
We’ve been basking in Dupont’s magic for years, but this is what the Olympics does. More than any other sporting event in the world, the Olympics elevates it’s athletes to a truly global audience.
Snoop’s Greatest Hits!! Checc it out 👊🏿🏅 #FollowTheDogg pic.twitter.com/vttMFYOsl6
— Snoop Dogg (@SnoopDogg) July 29, 2024
Snoop was offering his commentary on Dupont during his slot on NBC’s Olympic coverage in a segment titled ‘Snoop’s Greatest Hits’, where’s Dupont’s game-changing moment of brilliance in the men’s Sevens final was highlighted alongside clips of badminton, road cycling and Bob ‘the cap catcher’ – the internet’s most popular sporting side character since the All-Ireland final seagull.
Anyone engaged in rugby Twitter knows the extent of Dupont’s greatness is currently a hot topic. He’s widely accepted as being the greatest currently playing the game, but his Olympic exploits have reignited the debate as to whether he’s simply the greatest.
There’s no black and white answer, but one certainty is that there are more people around the world who know who Antoine Dupont is than this time last week. Dupont already enjoyed superstar status in France, but even if the gifted Toulouse scrum-half had led his country to World Cup glory on home soil last year, that achievement wouldn’t have had the same global reach as steering France to Olympic gold.
Rugby remains a somewhat niche sport, but for the last week newcomers and neturals have tuned in from all corners of the world for what was a memorable Sevens tournament.
Dupont’s golden moment was the highlight of the men’s event, but it was arguably the women who stole the show.
The 69,000 in attendance at the Stade de France for the men’s action last Friday was the largest single day crowd in rugby Sevens history, but the 66,000-strong crowd for Sunday’s opening round of women’s pool games represented a record attendance for a women’s rugby event across both Sevens and 15s.
The entertainment on the pitch in Paris was good, but the moves happening off it were also significant.
Hours after the USA women shocked Australia to win an historic bronze medal on Tuesday, USA Rugby announced an ‘unprecedented donation’ of $4m from businesswoman Michele Kang to grow the women’s game ahead of the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. Canada’s superb run to silver – led by Irish head coach Jack Hanratty – should also ensure a boost for the game there.
Less tangible is the impact that has been made on social media, but it’s been interesting to watch on as rugby went viral.
On Sunday, USA player Ilona Maher hit 1.4 million followers on Instagram, making her the most-followed rugby player on the platform [South Africa captain Siya Kolisi and former All Black Sonny Bill Williams both have 1.3m]. At the time of writing, Maher’s followers had rocketed to the 2m mark.
In a world where online engagement is seen as being increasingly important towards growing a sport’s viewership, Maher is doing more to promote women’s rugby than many of the sport’s governing unions.
One of Maher’s recent posts is a video of NFL star Jason Kelce [who boasts 2.5m Instagram follows] declaring himself “an official fan of women’s rugby at the Olympics” while decked out in USA kit. On his own page, Kelce later posted a video of himself being taught how to throw a rugby ball by Maher’s father.
Public Enemy’s Flava Flav can be found in Maher’s comment section reminding the world he’s also a women’s rugby ‘super fan’, and true to his word, Flav was in the stands for the bronze medal match against Australia (Chuck D is more of a gymnastics man). Believe the hype.
Another post in which Maher talks about athletes’ body shapes has hit almost five millions views on TikTok.
“Ilona is without a doubt a superstar of these Games. Full stop,” World Rugby CEO Alan Gilpin told AFP.
“She’s rugby’s most followed athlete, has a following that’s greater than most, if not all of the household names in Paris, and attracted an extra 300,000 Instagram and 100,000 TikTok followers overnight.”
And while the Olympics didn’t quite go to plan for Ireland’s two squads in Paris, that didn’t stop a huge audience from marvelling over the athleticism of the women’s team.
A clip of Erin King catching and holding Eve Higgins over her head from a restart before safely grounding her teammate currently has over 350,000 likes and 26m views on X, along with 8m views on TikTok, with the count still soaring.
This is absolutely insane. pic.twitter.com/UQYnd3Mh96
— QUAN (@QuannyNitro) July 30, 2024
These are numbers most Unions can only dream of. For context, the Ireland Sevens account on X – only active since November of last year – has less than 5,000 followers.
All of which makes these Paris Games feel like something of a missed opportunity for Ireland.
On the back of their best-ever season, the men’s team went to Paris aiming for a medal but finished sixth, and could now lose some key squad members to retirement. The women’s team placed eighth after a challenging campaign, with captain Lucy Rock already confirmed to be leaving the Sevens programme.
There was hope this Olympics would see Sevens capture the wider public’s imagination in Ireland but instead the nation has been basking in the glory of Mona McSharry and Daniel Wiffen’s achievements in the pool, while badminton star Nhat Nguyen and canoeist Liam Jegou became must-watch TV appointments, with Ireland’s box-office track stars still to come.
It would have been wonderful to watch the excitement that a medal game for either Ireland Sevens team could have generated.
With the Olympics done for another four years, the Ireland Sevens will go back to competing in the shadows of the World Series, where their games take place on online streams and the calendar unfortunately remains without an Ireland date.
Yet looking at the bigger picture, the Paris Games has achieved its aim of selling Sevens to a wider audience.
One wonders if Snoop will remember to tune in when it all kicks off again.
