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Muscular man next to steroid vials and needle
In May, the first-ever Enhanced Games (the event dubbed the “Steroid Olympics”) unfolded in Las Vegas. It left a bit to be desired when it came to the performance of the juiced-up competitors who took part, and that was certainly the case on the financial side of things based on how much the company that oversaw the event ended up losing.
I’ve always been a big fan of the idea that every Olympic event should feature an average person going up against some of the best athletes in that particular field to highlight just how impressive they are. On the other side of the spectrum, there’s also something to be said for the notion of allowing someone who’s taken a cocktail of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs to compete to show what the human body is capable of when pushed to its limits.
That second box has been checked on more than a few occasions thanks to cheaters at the Olympic Games, and baseball fans who watched the likes of Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds do their thing in their prime also got a glimpse at the effects of PEDs.
However, every legitimate governing body on the planet has a slew of rules in place that bar athletes from harnessing them in competition.
As a result, it was hard not to be at least a little intrigued by the concept of the Enhanced Games, the gathering where participants were essentially given carte blanche to take a wide variety of otherwise prohibited substances with the goal of setting world records that wouldn’t actually be recognized.
However, the inaugural edition ended up falling a bit flat, and it was also a very costly endeavor for the company that put it together.
The Enhanced Games ended up costing its parent company over $60 million while causing its stock to tank
A grand total of 42 athletes took part in the Enhanced Games when they were held in Las Vegas in May, including six who were theoretically supposed to serve as a control by abstaining from the PEDs other competitors harnessed.
The winner of each event made $250,000, and there was also $1 million up for grabs for anyone who managed to break a world record. Kristian Gkolomeev was the only person who was able to check that second box (doing so in the 50-meter swim with the help of a swimsuit that’s also banned in regular competitions), and a clean Hunter Armstrong was able to beat juiced-up swimmers in the 50m backstroke.
The general lack of world records may have saved Enhanced Group Inc., the publicly traded company behind the competition, some money in the short term, but it was a bit of a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of things.
The company peaked with a stock price of $11.19 and a market cap of around $1.2 billion after debuting on the NYSE a few weeks before the Enhanced Games took place, but both of those numbers have experienced a precipitous drop since then (sitting at $1.66 and around $640 million, respectively, as of Monday morning).
The company also posted some ugly losses due to the cost that came with putting on the event. According to Front Office Sports, a report detailing its gains and losses in the second fiscal quarter showed it lost a grand total of $61.9 million during that period while earning just $17.7 million in revenue, with the $52.04 million it spent to put the competition together serving as the biggest deficit.
This can be boiled down to a “You Have To Spend Money To Make Money” situation, but it’s pretty clear the Enhanced Games will need to figure out other ways to make money aside from peddling PEDs on its website. You have to imagine the company is angling for some sort of television deal (the first event streamed online), but it will also need to figure out a way to up the entertainment factor based on how the first iteration was received.