Figure skating arrives at the World Championships in Prague, taking place from 24 to 29 March, but without the presence of double Olympic gold medallist Alysa Liu from Milano Cortina 2026, whose success not only placed her at the top of the sport but also turned her into a mainstream celebrity within just a few weeks. Her post-Games rise, with close to 8 million Instagram followers, appearances at Paris Fashion Week, the Vanity Fair party, a key to the city of Oakland and murals painted in her honour, can also be seen reflected in other examples across the Olympic ecosystem.

What matters is not only how quickly that leap happened, but also what it set in motion around her. In the United States and within the International Skating Union -ISU-, the reading is immediate: when an athlete breaks through the ceiling of a niche sport and enters popular culture, the conversation shifts at the same time around audiences, sponsorship, licensing, participation and the creation of new reference points for the sport.

The opportunity Alysa Liu creates for her federation

In the four weeks following the Games, U.S. Figure Skating recorded increases of between 20% and 30% in registrations for learn-to-skate programmes at several rinks across the country, above the rises of around 10% or less seen in other Olympic cycles. The most cited example is a rink in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which received 300 registrations in February, roughly the equivalent of what it would usually see in a full year. That is not a minor detail for the federation, because membership accounts for between 30% and 40% of its revenue.

The response does not stop at grassroots participation. The ISU has already launched a request for proposals for combined sponsorship and broadcast rights agreements, with the intention of capitalising on the post-Milano Cortina 2026 wave, and that search now includes markets that were not previously among figure skating’s traditional strongholds, such as Mexico, Indonesia and Thailand. The governing body also maintains that the priority is to widen distribution and avoid placing the sport behind too many paywalls, a particularly sensitive issue at a time when digital visibility shapes a large part of growth.

The Games no longer just award medals: they also multiply audiences

That change in scale does not come only from sporting success, but from the size of the showcase. At Tokyo 2020, more than 100 million unique users visited Olympic digital platforms or used the official app during the first week of competition. NBC accumulated 2.5 billion streaming minutes, 77% more than at PyeongChang 2018, while Olympic posts on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X and Weibo generated 3.7 billion interactions. Olympic accounts had a combined 75 million followers at the time, a critical mass that helps explain why an athlete can move from being known within a discipline to becoming part of the broader public conversation in a matter of days.

Paris 2024 provided an even clearer sequence. According to social media tracking data collected during the Games, Rebeca Andrade gained 9.13 million Instagram followers, up 333%; Simone Biles gained 5.12 million, up 68%; Ilona Maher gained 2.73 million, up 277%; Sunisa Lee gained 1.46 million, up 96%; Jordan Chiles gained 946,000, up 161%; Noah Lyles gained 748,000, up 94%; and Stephen Nedoroscik gained 422,600, a rise of 2,414%. In that sense, the Games no longer reward only a single performance: they also suddenly reshape an athlete’s community, commercial value and ability to influence.

Fame no longer depends only on the podium

The other consequence is that this growth is not limited to those who dominate the medal table. Henrik Christiansen, the Norwegian swimmer, turned a series of videos about the muffins in the Olympic Village into a recognisable identity that gave him unprecedented international visibility and opened up a personal narrative around branding, content and the promotion of swimming. The same had already happened at Tokyo 2020, with athletes who used TikTok, Instagram or short-form formats to show the backstage side of competition, from athlete accommodation to everyday scenes that previously never reached the public. The Olympic athlete is no longer only about performance on screen; it is also about narrative, tone, proximity and the ability to hold attention beyond the event itself.

In figure skating, moreover, that transition comes up against a structural limit that affects its digital exploitation: music. The complexity of licensing and clearance has for years reduced the stable presence of highlights and clips on social and streaming platforms, precisely where much of the conversation is now decided. That is why, alongside the immediate effect generated by a figure such as Alysa Liu, the debate within the sector also extends to formats, career length and the need to build profiles that last beyond a single Olympic cycle. With the World Championships already under way in Prague, the issue is not only how much an athlete can grow in two weeks, but how much of that momentum can remain in the sport once the Olympic spotlight begins to fade.