Long Tail in the Olympics

Michael Sheeley, co-founder of Kickscout and RunKeeper, argued for the Olympics as evidence of the Long Tail:

And of course he’s right. When you put sports on the X-axis the Olympics seem to support the idea that viewers are hungry to watch activities outside of football, basketball, baseball, soccer and hockey.

The idea is basically that the internet makes it possible (and cheap) to provide access to a bunch of niche goods that weren’t previously profitable. Here’s Anderson with an example:

What’s really amazing about the Long Tail is the sheer size of it. Combine enough non-hits on the Long Tail and you’ve got a market bigger than the hits. Take books: The average Barnes & Noble carries 130,000 titles. Yet more than half of Amazon’s book sales come from outside its top 130,000 titles. Consider the implication: If the Amazon statistics are any guide, the market for books that are not even sold in the average bookstore is larger than the market for those that are (see “Anatomy of the Long Tail“). In other words, the potential book market may be twice as big as it appears to be, if only we can get over the economics of scarcity. Venture capitalist and former music industry consultant Kevin Laws puts it this way: “The biggest money is in the smallest sales.”

But when you put events on the X-axis rather than sports, the Olympics seems to me to contradict Anderson’s theory. If I were really interested in handball, the long tail theory would suggest I’d now be able to follow it easily and would do so. I wouldn’t have to settle for one of a handful of sports with mass appeal; I could indulge my niche preference.

Article on that : http://bostinno.com/2012/07/31/are-the-olympics-evidence-for-or-against-the-long-tail/