THE ATHLETE VS THE ALGORITHM

When did being good at sport stop being enough?

There was a time when getting sponsored as an athlete seemed pretty simple. Be good at your sport, win things, get noticed and hopefully a brand comes knocking.

Now? You can be one of the best athletes in the field and still lose the deal to someone with a bigger Instagram following. And this is where the argument gets interesting. Take HYROX athlete Meg Jacoby. She won the 2024 HYROX World Championship and became the first woman to finish a HYROX race in under an hour. You can't really argue with the performance. But she has also spoken about the other side of being a professional athlete now. The posts, shoots, appearances, interviews and what she calls the “influencer type duties” that come with sponsorship. So somewhere along the way, being an athlete became two jobs. You have to perform and you have to be seen performing. It’s easy to say that the best athlete should get the biggest sponsorship. Part of us agrees. If someone is winning races, breaking records and putting everything into their sport, it feels pretty backwards when the first question becomes “How many followers do they have?”

But there is another side to it.

Brands aren't giving out prize money. They're investing in people who can put their brand in front of an audience. An athlete finishing fifth who has built a loyal community and actually influences what people buy could genuinely offer a brand more than the person standing at the top of the podium. That doesn't make them the better athlete. It might make them the better brand partner. Those two things aren't the same.

Where we think it gets messy is when athletes feel like they have to become influencers just to compete for those opportunities. Training is already a full-time job for many of them. Add recovery, travel, competitions and everything else that comes with performing at that level. Then throw in filming, editing, posting, talking to camera, keeping up with trends and trying to work out what the algorithm wants this week. It’s a lot. Especially when some of the best athletes aren't natural content creators. And why should they be?

That doesn't mean they don't have anything worth showing. Usually they have more. The hard sessions. The early mornings. The injuries. The comeback. The race that went completely wrong. The one that finally went right. The story is already happening. It just needs someone to tell it properly and that's where we think creative has a place in this conversation.

STRDY isn't interested in turning every athlete into an influencer. We'd rather athletes concentrate on being athletes. But pretending social media doesn't matter isn't going to help them either. Brands want personality, visibility and community alongside performance. Athletes need to show people who they are outside of a results table. That doesn't mean manufacturing a personality for Instagram.It means making the real one visible. Maybe we need to stop asking whether the athlete or the influencer deserves the deal. A podium doesn't tell you everything about someone's value to a brand. Neither does a follower count. The algorithm definitely shouldn't decide who the best athlete is.That's what the competition is for.

Maybe the best athlete doesn't need to post more. Maybe sport just needs to tell their story better.