The sport of biathlon is experiencing a surge of popularity. Only ice hockey has outperformed biathlon in terms of ticket sales for the 2026 Games in Italy.
 
The Milan Cortina Winter and Paralympic Games have sold almost 1.2 million tickets as of Monday, Feb. 2, with Sunday's first biathlon competition at the Anterselva Biathlon Arena having sold out. The biathlon governing body hopes to reach 300 million fans during the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, International Biathlon Union general secretary Max Cobb said. 

"What we can see already is that we're on a trajectory this season to have the most interest ever during an Olympic Games," Cobb told Reuters from Milan. 

In biathlon, everything can be won or lost on the shooting range or while skiing on the challenging course, and the combination of skills makes for compelling viewing. 

"There has been tremendous growth in the last six years in France, where we've seen a tripling of TV audience and a record-setting TV audience for the (IBU) World Cup this year already," Cobb explained. 

The Biathlon Union has observed massive increases in Finland, Poland, Italy, and the United States, where they are seeing twice the engagement and interest versus last year, Cobb said. 

 "I think some of that is the promotional effect or the halo effect of the Games, even before the Games begin — that this is an Olympic season and that people are more interested, or that the non-core fans are discovering biathlon," he said. 

An active competitor back in his college days at Dartmouth, Cobb has been involved in biathlon for more than four decades, and he said that a medal for his native country would do wonders for the profile of the sport there. 

"While the U.S. won the most world championship medals of any non-European or any national federation outside of Europe, they've still yet to win their first Olympic medal in the sport," he said, singling out 23-year-old Campbell Wright as the American who might possibly bring that drought to an end. 

"I think (there is) a great potential for them to realize this first medal at these Games, but of course, you know it's one athlete (Campbell), and sport is very challenging, so we'll see what happens, but it's a really exciting time for U.S. biathlon and I think that can be an enormous game-changer for us." 

Cobb is delighted this year's event will take place in the biathlon-crazy Antholz-Anterselva region of northern Italy, where fans from Austria and Germany will pour across the borders to cheer on the competitors. 

"Audience participation is a really key thing, both in the stadium where there's this wonderful cheer for each shot and then absolute silence in between on this one-and-a-half second cadence — you really feel the spectators are there with the athlete, urging them on," Cobb said. "And then to have people out on the course in one of the most demanding hills before the finish is just wonderful, too — that brings so much to the atmosphere and to the athlete experience."