Everything is broken: Olympics edition

I've decided it's time to nationalise sport.

A wild stance for me to take, really – me! an avowed theatre kid! For most of my life I've been made furious by the prioritisation of sports over the arts, in school, on the news, really almost everywhere.

Yet, here we are. I've been watching the Olympics and I've decided it's time to nationalise sport.

Most of the time I think of sports as an area in which there is simply way too much money. Fees for players, the sheer amount of merch, and on top of the immediate finances, sports gambling (ban it).

But that's just because most of the time you're only hearing about like, three sports. In the UK football, in New Zealand rugby, in the US the other kind of football. Basketball. Baseball. Ice hockey.

Large scale team sports that suck all the oxygen out of the room.

But then the Olympics happen, and they remind everyone that of just how many different sports there are. Things you've never heard of, things you could never have imagined! Look! We will make this guys ski uphill, then climb some stairs, then ski uphill a bit more, then ski downhill: this is elite athleticism.

And every so often you'll catch a commentator talking about what it took for one of these athletes to get there. This silver medalists in the biathlon has been working three jobs to fund his Olympic bid. That hockey team is doing really well with their no goals to four because that country doesn't have a national league so all those players have to hold down real jobs.

I think that's tragic! If you love an athletics and you're good enough at it to be at the Olympics for it, I don't think you should have to also have a normal job! Let alone three! Your job is to contribute to all this entertainment once every four years (and to lesser entertainments that only a tiny number of people will pay attention to the rest of the time).

According to Planet Money it costs an entire million dollars for a figure skater to make it to the Olympics. Figure skating might be a bit of an outlier, expense-wise – there's choreography and costuming to pay for on top of coaching and travel, and time on the rink for one person to practice is not small. But all elite sports require specialist equipment, expert coaching, and huge amounts of training time. I don't think that burden should be on individual athletes.

The reasons I'm ready to socialise sports are thus:

ONE: I like to very occasionally watch elite athletes do bonkers shit.

I am never going to follow curling or mountaineering or whatever when it's not the Olympics. I have a vague idea now that I might watch the figure skating worlds next month but honestly I'll probably forget.

But in four years I'll be very seated once again, and I want to be watching people who are at the top of their game, and that requires money.

I watched a video essay recently on why the US is so bad at the Winter Olympics.

It talks about this in comparison to Norway. Norway, who use an incredible amount of money to give everyone cheap access to sports, compared to the US who run everything for profit in a stew of monopolies and private equity takeovers.

Private industries chasing profits drive the prices up so high that for most people even taking the first step into a sport is prohibitive. You can't even give it a go to figure out if you like it, let alone commit to it enough to become truly great.

I want to live in a world where people who have a particular talent or passion have the freedom to explore, to hone their skills, so that once every four years I can see incredible stuff.

TWO: I think it's bad when only rich people can do a particular thing. I don't care what the thing is, if only rich people can do it, that's bad.

It's bad for the people who want to do the thing but can't afford to, but it's bad for the rest of us too! We're not getting the best of the best! We're getting the best of the ones who can afford it! We deserve better.

THREE: I think at an amateur, just for fun level, there is a sport for everyone. But a shockingly small percentage of all the sports there are are available to play at an amateur, just for fun level.

If we were to build a wider ecosystem of available sports to muck about at, I think there would be widespread positive ramifications.

Because it's good to hang out with people while you do something physical! Partly because moving your body around is good, but there's more going on as well. It makes you put your phone down, for one thing. And it helps you just relax a bit about yourself. You learn to throw yourself into things, to stop being so self-conscious.

Lots of local amateur spaces where people of all ages can try things out and maybe those people just find a fun thing to do with their leisure time, and maybe every so often one of them becomes one of the best at it in the world.

Don't you want to have a crack at bobsledding? Wouldn't you like to try your hand at ski jumping?

FOUR: Going to watch sports should also be more accessible. Going to watch a vast array of different sports happening in your local area should be more accessible.

I don't see any downsides!

And I don't think it would cost the taxpayer that much money! The state would take ownership of all sports and the obscene amounts of money that currently flood into the industry via football and what have you could be carefully spread out among the less spectated of the spectator sports.

I think slowly which sports bring in how much income would change as well. Any given thing getting a bit more attention pushes it more into the conversation which brings it more attention, and on and on.

Simply put, the world should be more fun. And more of that fun should be free.