The outrage over the Enhanced Games ignores the risks many already accept in sport

The Enhanced Games, slated to commence in May 2026, has sparked outrage across the sporting world. This new competition is the first in history to openly permit performance-enhancing drugs, and sporting bodies aren’t happy about it.

World Athletics president Sebastian Coe called the concept “bollocks”, while World Anti-Doping Agency president Witold Banka has dismissed it as “dangerous” and “ridiculous”.

Such criticisms might be justified, but they overlook the fact that the Enhanced Games is making obvious what society has always quietly accepted – that most people are willing to watch athletes risk harm when the entertainment is good enough. And that’s something that all sporting bodies should spend more time considering.

This bargain between spectacle and safety isn’t new to sport. Ancient Romans packed the Colosseum to watch gladiators fight to the death. It’s certainly been toned down over the last 2,000 years. But the gladiatorial spirit remains alive in modern arenas. How it’s packaged has merely become more sophisticated.

Consider boxing. Society has allowed professional boxing for more than 100 years despite the dangers to fighters. In one group of amateur and professional boxers, 62% were found to have dementia or amnesia.

Yet arenas still sell out. Fans celebrate knockout victories even though they know they may shorten a boxer’s life. Sporting bodies and fans have decided this trade-off is acceptable. Every time a ticket is bought, a statement is made about acceptable risk.

The multi-sport Enhanced Games simply extends this logic. Held in Las Vegas, athletes will be able to use performance-enhancing substances (approved by the drugs regulator for medical uses) “off-label” under medical supervision. These include testosterone, growth hormone and anabolic steroids.

Long-term use of substances like these can damage the heart and blood vessels, harm the liver, disrupt the body’s natural hormone production (potentially causing infertility) and affect a person’s mood and mental health.

Read more: From bodybuilding to the local gym: how performance-enhancing drugs can damage the heart

The organisers aim to usher in a “new era of elite competition” and with it “the future of human performance”. Founder Aron D'Souza, an Australian businessman, thinks athletes should be free to do whatever they want to their own bodies. The International Federation of Sports Medicine has challenged the Enhanced Games for putting athletes at risk.

But isn’t the Enhanced Games simply a more dangerous version of traditional athletics? If brain trauma is the potential price of boxing entertainment, why the outrage about pharmaceutical enhancement risks? The moral panic about chemical enhancement seems inconsistent with society’s silence about the proven harms in so many of the sports people already love.

The Olympics already celebrates athletes who push their bodies to extremes through punishing training regimens, strict diets and recovery methods that test the limits of human physiology. Research has documented serious physical and psychological harms in many sports, including some like gymnastics and figure skating where even child athletes have faced high risks of injury and mental illness, including eating disorders, anxiety and depression.

The Enhanced Games just moves the risk threshold further along a spectrum society has already accepted.

Every time a new enhanced athlete is announced, their national sporting bodies issue condemnations. Sport Ireland stated that they were “deeply disappointed” about swimmer Shane Ryan’s decision to join the Enhanced Games. When fellow swimmer Ben Proud announced his intention to participate, governing body UK Sport said it “condemns everything the Enhanced Games stands for” and that they were “incredibly disappointed” with his decision.

But these same bodies preside over sports where athletes routinely suffer serious injuries. When will they acknowledge the risks they’re already asking athletes to accept?

The question isn’t whether the Enhanced Games introduces something morally unprecedented. It doesn’t. What it does is forces sports fans to confront the bargain they’ve always accepted but rarely discuss. Fans want extraordinary athletic performances, and they’re willing to let athletes pay extraordinary prices to deliver them.

Being honest about risk

If sporting bodies are serious about athlete welfare rather than just moral posturing, they need to be honest about risk across all of sport. In research ethics, institutional review boards conduct formal risk-benefit analyses before approving human studies. They document potential harms and assess whether benefits justify risks.

Sporting bodies should do the same. This includes the Enhanced Games. So far, they’re failing just as badly as traditional sports, hiding behind claims of medical supervision rather than stating the trade-offs.

Informed consent is central to medical ethics and some ethicists argue it isn’t talked about enough in sport. Athletes should understand the specific risks of their sport based on robust data, not vague warnings.

Read more: In Victorian Britain the crowds approved of sports doping – with cocaine

For example, all boxers should be aware of the dangers they face each time they take a punch to the head. Similarly, all enhanced athletes should understand what prolonged testosterone and growth hormone do to the body. Informed consent requires real information, not liability waivers.

As a philosopher of science, I suggest we need to be consistent about our judgments across different sports. The sporting establishment denouncing the Enhanced Games should look in the mirror. Boxing, rugby and motorsports organisations as well as bodies representing a host of other sports preside over activities with documented long-term harms.

The selective outrage is telling. It suggests this is more about maintaining comfortable fictions than protecting athletes. We prefer our sports wrapped in the language of safety and personal freedom. The Enhanced Games threatens to make that fiction harder to maintain.

Byron Hyde is a member of the Health Research Authority London Chelsea Research Ethics Committee and the Open University Human Research Ethics Committee. This essay does not reflect the opinions of the Health Research Authority or the Open University.