SportsEngine Introduces First Kids Guide to the Olympics

NBC Sports Next’s SportsEngine, in conjunction with internal agency partner, 59 Creative, reimagined what it meant to introduce kids to sporting events, and developed a first-of-its-kind digital Kids Guide to the Olympics to bring the Games to life in an innovative and relevant way.

Research informed how this interactive guide could play a fun, yet important role in the lives of the youth that SportsEngine already engages with. Findings showed that current Olympic resources for kids were dull and disjointed, and lacked the colorful, imaginative challenges that stimulate kids. These learnings laid a foundation that would shape the guide.

The resulting digital interactive Olympics guide debuted in June 2021, in time for kids to learn about the Tokyo Games and its individual sports and discuss with family. The 122-page guide included activities to engage and drive conversations such as: crossword puzzles, word scrambles, question & answer, compare & contrast, drawing challenges, trivia, and history of the Games. All activities could be downloaded and printed at no cost through SportsEngine.com.

Capturing momentum from the Tokyo Games, the team introduced a second edition: The Kids Guide to the 2022 Bejing Winter Olympics and Paralympics, creatively featuring all 15 Olympic and six Paralympic winter sports across 70 pages of interactive content and fun visuals.

Bridging the gap between youth who had not yet experienced an Olympic Games event with those old enough to remember, SportsEngine’s Kids Guide to the Olympics showcased inspiration and education on every page. The guides were supported and promoted through social media, digital advertising, on-air television mentions from NBC affiliates as well as through National Governing Body partner social media cross-promotion to impressive results: 22,147 total downloads, 14.2 million social media impressions and more than 153,000 social engagements (shares/retweets/comments) across SportsEngine’s three platforms (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter).