UIPM Secretary General’s Message: Let’s analyse why the IOC reduced our quota for LA28

By Shiny Fang, UIPM Secretary General

A few weeks ago the IOC released the athlete quotas for sports taking part in the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games, and the announcement contained a surprise for our community as Modern Pentathlon suffered a reduction in four athletes per gender compared to Paris 2024.

Let’s analyse the reasons behind this quota reduction and consider the IOC evaluation process that contributed to the decision.

How do we feel? 

• Shocked, yes – we did everything that the IOC wished us to do in reforming our sport to be more compatible with the future direction of the Olympic Games, and even went beyond expectations – although we do understand that the numbers that will provide a full justification for the change take time to achieve.
• Sad, yes – because the decision will have a negative impact on our development programme for new countries, with only 64 pentathletes able to compete in LA28 (although we hope for many more in future Games).
• Unfairly treated, yes – Pentathlon was already the sport with the least medals and the lowest athlete quota based on Paris 2024 numbers. 

But why did this happen?

It is necessary to disclose the reasons, and we urge the whole community to work with us to enhance the position of Pentathlon within the Olympic Games!

The IOC conducts an evaluation entitled ‘Games Time Data Collection’ for each edition of the Olympic Games, and then uses the data to make decisions about future programmes. The list of indicators for Paris 24 comprised:

1. Viewer hours

2. Total maximum audience

3. Average audience

4. Digital viewership

5. Number of internet searches

6. Page views on most popular websites

7. Unique visitors on most popular websites

8. Social media sharing of articles

9. Social media conversations

10. IF-owned social media performance

11. Page views on IOC website and mobile app

12. Favorite sports among general public and youth

13. Percentage of available tickets sold

14. Number of press articles

With the exception of four indicators (3, 10, 12 and 13), all the results are highly reliant on the number of days and hours allocated to each sport during the Olympic period, as well as the number of medals. The four mentioned indicators provided a fairer assessment of performance, in some cases looking at averages, and in other cases with metrics applied to the relative size of the sport and federation.

Unfortunately, with only two medals across four days of the Games, and only three broadcasting days, Pentathlon is not able to compete with the vast majority of sports across the other 10 indicators. 

So how did our sport perform in 2024 across indicators 3, 10, 12, and 13? 

• For No.3, the average TV audience, our Women’s Final day had a little more than the median (34.016 million), reaching 34.347 million, with the Men’s Final achieving 22.330 million, which was also way above the minimum (5.355 million).
• For No.10, IF-owned social media performance, we reached exactly the median level metric of 218 across our own platforms, while the minimum was 84.
• For No.12, favorite sport among public and youth, we scored slightly higher (5.48) than the minimum (5.26). It clearly tells that we need to attract more youth and create more public awareness, while we know that we are going in the correct direction with our innovations.
• For No.13, percentage of available tickets sold, this was the best result for our sport, since we reached almost the top performance with 98.13%. The maximum was 99.28% and the minimum was 72.92%.

How can we perform better across the other 10 indicators, especially as some of our strongest territories were not included in some of the IOC calculations?

A lot of work again lies in front of us, and it can only be done with each and all of you together.

With further consultation with our Executive Board led by the President, we will be back to call for your support and contributions to help Pentathlon improve in each of those areas – and to earn the fair treatment it deserves.