Viral Routines and Record Viewership: NCAA Gymnastics Set for the Spotlight Surrounding Championship Weekend

ESPN’s gymnastics presentation stands out among the rest because of the production’s emphasis on showing every routine rather than following a select handful of gymnasts. For two hours, the action is jam-packed and the production team makes the meet accessible to both the casual fan and the ‘gymternet,’ the passionate gymnastics fan base across the Internet.

“Every gymnastics meet is an opportunity to create a new fan,” Soares noted. “We never assume that everyone knows everything about the gymnasts, teams or even how a meet works. We really focus on navigating the story of the meet, throughout the meet. We want every fan, whether it’s their first or 100th meet, to build a connection to what is happening on the floor, and to totally understand what the scores mean at any given point.”

For Webb, a former competitive gymnast, amplifying gymnastics content was a point of emphasis when she joined ESPN’s social team in 2018. The sport has exploded to become the most-engaged women’s sport across ESPN social, driving more than 95 million impressions in 2022 alone. While she isn’t sharing the exact recipe to the secret social sauce, Webb thinks the sport has even more room to grow on social media and ESPN’s approach can advance with it.

“Gymnastics has so much more potential because every year, the athletes get more and more fun to watch,” Webb said. “Social media is always evolving and it’s important to try new things and see what works and what doesn’t. Whenever something fails, we take the time to figure out why it failed and try a new approach. Whenever something succeeds, we keep the momentum going.”