The Enhanced Games is far more than it appears to be on the surface, with organisers admitting it has very little to do with sporting accolades and more to do with turning regular Joes into Greek gods.
Enhanced founder Aron D’Souza says that the aim of the Enhanced Games is “not to build a sporting event” but to kickstart “the tenth age of mankind” as part of an elaborate marketing play to create a Direct-To-Consumer (DTC) telehealth and supplement empire.
The fact is it has very little to do with sport at all, with its chief purpose to take performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) mainstream.
The Games website states that they are challenging traditional models of sport by embracing science, innovation, and measurable performance enhancement under regulated conditions.
Yet what it truly wants is for the exposure from the Games to result in people rushing to purchase its supplements, testosterone and peptides – many of which aren’t yet approved by the FDA and other food and drug regulatory bodies around the world.
That aim is not being hidden by Enhanced either, it is simply being masked over by athletes posting promotional content looking like they are more likely to compete in bodybuilding contests rather than races.
The inaugural Enhanced Games, which is being referred to as the ‘Steroid Olympics’, has cost organisers upwards of $50 million, with costs ranging from the construction of a custom 2,500-seat arena at Resorts World Las Vegas to the stipends paid to the 42 athletes competing.
Then there’s the exorbitant prize money on offer for athletes to compete and the additional funds for those who break a world record.
In each swimming event, there are four competitors, with first place getting approximately $350,000, then $175,000 for second, $105,000 and $70,000 for third and fourth.
If an athlete breaks a world record, there is an additional bonus ranging from $1.4m ($1m USD) to $350,000 ($250k USD).
In the case of Aussie James Magnussen, if he breaks the world record in the 50m event, he will receive a $1.4m bonus, but if he does so in the 100m, he will only get a $350,000 bonus.
So theoretically, if he wins both the 50m and 100m events and breaks the world record in both, he will pocket close to $2.5m.
So how are the Games making money, you may ask?
Well it isn’t from media rights and ticketing that’s for sure, as the event can be streamed on YouTube, and all 2,500 tickets were given out for free.
The entire event will cost tens of millions, and only peanuts will be recouped during the event. However, the reality is that the investors never planned to profit from the event itself, instead, they are banking on a potentially far more lucrative business opportunity.
Investors are gambling on it becoming an avenue into introducing steroids to the public, not for the purpose of turning ordinary civilians into Olympic-level athletes, but in a bid to sell the benefits of longevity and health.
D’Souza has said as much on numerous occasions, labelling this the start of the “Enhanced Age”.
He believes embracing performance medicine “will enable humans across the world, across income spectrums, to have longer, healthier, happier lives”, according to the ABC.
D’Souza states that ageing is “a disease that we should be able to treat, cure, and eventually solve”.
The business model is directly inspired by Red Bull.
Instead of relying on traditional sports revenues like broadcast rights and sponsorships, the sporting event is simply a marketing spectacle used to promote the company’s primary business, in this case direct-to-consumer health and performance enhancement products.
At no point in time has D’Souza hidden this fact either. From the time of its conception, he has said he is on a “mission to build superhumanity”.
He told Equity last year of his plan to use the Games as a way of selling a “human enhancement product”.
“We use sports marketing to sell a human enhancement product,” D’Souza said in an episode of Equity last year, Disruption via doping.
“It’s a telehealth service like Hims or Roman (American telehealth platforms providing treatments for men’s health), except we (will) have evidence that the best and fastest athletes in the world use our protocols.”
And he hopes that Fred Kerley can break Usain Bolt’s longstanding 100m world record, in what he says will be a watershed moment.
“I believe that when Fred (Kerley) breaks (Usain Bolt’s) 100-meter world record in Vegas next year, it will be a watershed moment to show that enhanced humans are better than ordinary humans,” he said.
While on the surface it may seem almost dystopian, the reality is that a lot of rich and powerful businessmen are banking on it to work.
One man who has put his money in Enhanced is the US President’s son, Donald Trump Jr, whose 1789 Capital is a major investor in the Enhanced company.
German billionaire biotech entrepreneur Christian Angermayer, co-founder of PayPal Peter Thiel, American entrepreneur and scientist Balaji Srinivasan, cryptocurrency giants the Winklevoss twins and Saudi prince Khaled bin Alwaleed Al Saud have also invested heavily.
The biggest investor is Angermayer, who has invested a whopping $28m into Enhanced, which was valued at $1.2 billion when it went public in May.
Angermayer is confident that the findings from the Enhanced Games and the Enhanced studies will determine that PEDs are safe when used under proper medical supervision.
Angermayer and other investors are also convinced that, much like the boom of weight loss drugs, the PED market can skyrocket in the next decade.
The German billionaire believes doctor-prescribed substances that help us with everything from muscle recovery to brain function will become as mainstream as taking a daily multivitamin.
“It’s such a strongly-held, wrong belief … this whole idea, for example, that performance-enhancing drugs are horrible for you. It’s not right,” he told AFP ahead of the Enhanced Games.
“ … Humans want to optimise themselves throughout history. The foundation of our Western model — the entire Greek mythology — is based on demigods, or humans who are elevated, and to do things which are outside the abilities of ordinary people.”
What are the Enhanced athletes taking?
Enhanced has asked its athletes not to share their specific regimens to avoid people copying, but Angermayer and Enhanced CEO Max Martin have stated they both have personal prescriptions to take larger doses of testosterone than what many of their athletes are receiving.
The majority of competitors have taken testosterone (91 per cent) and human growth hormones (79 per cent) during training, while other anabolic steroids have also been used.
The Enhanced Games expects world records to be beaten on Monday, and while any such achievements would not count as official records, the athlete would get a major financial windfall.
But away from the Games, Enhanced is conducting a five-year clinical trial with 36 of the 42 Enhanced athletes to see how their bodies are impacted by PEDs.
The whole purpose of the Enhanced Games is to show that the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) guidelines are outdated and that there is no harm in taking safe performance enhancements to improve performance.
And they’re hoping Monday’s competition is the first step in convincing the public of that.
“The ordinary person, the non-sports person, thinks, ‘Oh there must be something wrong, that’s why they are banned,’” Angermayer told ESPN.
“It’s a big opportunity to really shape the Zeitgeist.”
