The Enhanced Games — tech’s steroid extravaganza — didn’t pay off, as company posts $60 million loss

“增强运动会”（Enhanced Games）——这场科技界的类固醇盛宴——并未获得回报，公司亏损 6000 万美元

I traveled to Las Vegas in May to watch the Enhanced Games — a one-of-a-kind sports competition that lets athletes compete while using the kind of performance-enhancing drugs typically banned in professional sports. The games, derided as the “steroid Olympics,” were put on by a telehealth company backed by the likes of Peter Thiel and staffed by veterans of the crypto, AI, and biotech industries. 今年 5 月，我前往拉斯维加斯观看了“增强运动会”（Enhanced Games）——这是一场独一无二的体育赛事，允许运动员在服用职业体育中通常被禁用的各类兴奋剂的情况下进行比赛。这场被嘲讽为“类固醇奥运会”的赛事由一家远程医疗公司举办，该公司背后有彼得·蒂尔（Peter Thiel）等大佬支持，员工则来自加密货币、人工智能和生物技术行业。

The event ended up being more than a little anticlimactic. Hailed by its creators as an event that would fundamentally transform the world of organized sports, the games resulted in few exciting feats. Only one world record fell, and it came in swimming, a sport where records are broken often. 这场赛事最终显得有些令人失望。尽管创办者吹嘘它将从根本上改变有组织体育的世界，但比赛中几乎没有出现什么令人兴奋的壮举。仅有一项世界纪录被打破，而且还是在游泳这个纪录频出的项目中。

Now it can be said that, in addition to the games being a competitive flop, they were a commercial failure, too. Earlier this week, the Enhanced Group, the company that put on the games, posted its second-quarter earnings report, revealing that the company had suffered a net loss of nearly $62 million. Much of that loss came from hosting the games. 现在可以说，这场比赛不仅在竞技层面是一场惨败，在商业上也同样失败。本周早些时候，举办该赛事的 Enhanced Group 公司发布了第二季度财报，显示公司净亏损近 6200 万美元。大部分亏损源于举办此次赛事。

Enhanced Group, founded only several years ago in 2023, enjoyed an IPO earlier this year at a $1.2 billion valuation, and sells personalized health treatments via a digital telehealth platform. The treatments it sells are all FDA-approved, including peptides, testosterone injections, GLP-1s for weight loss, and other similar products. Enhanced Group 成立于 2023 年，仅几年时间，便于今年早些时候以 12 亿美元的估值上市，并通过数字远程医疗平台销售个性化健康疗法。其销售的疗法均获得美国食品药品监督管理局（FDA）批准，包括肽类药物、睾酮注射剂、用于减肥的 GLP-1 类药物及其他类似产品。

The company’s Q2 earnings report says it brought in $17.7 million in the last quarter, but most of that money came from sponsorships tied to the games, not the telehealth business on which the company was built. Scant information is available about how that core business is doing. The report casts doubt on claims previously made by Enhanced executives that the games will be an annual event (the company will either have to start making a whole lot more money or be comfortable losing tens of millions of dollars a year). 公司二季报显示，上季度营收为 1770 万美元，但其中大部分资金来自与赛事相关的赞助，而非公司赖以生存的远程医疗业务。关于其核心业务的经营状况，目前几乎没有公开信息。这份报告让 Enhanced 高管此前关于“将赛事常态化为年度活动”的承诺蒙上了阴影（公司要么必须开始赚取更多利润，要么就得接受每年亏损数千万美元的现实）。

Enhanced may already be signaling a pivot. The company’s report also highlights the recent launch of a new online series, Enhanced Breakers, which it says “operates at a fraction of the cost of a full Games event” while still keeping “athletes competing, audiences engaged, sponsors interested, and performance medicine in front of the world year-round.” Enhanced 可能已经在暗示转型。公司报告还重点介绍了最近推出的新在线系列节目《Enhanced Breakers》，称其“运营成本仅为完整赛事的一小部分”，同时仍能保持“运动员参与竞争、观众保持关注、赞助商维持兴趣，并让运动医学全年呈现在世界面前”。

Enhanced’s own woes aside, the industry around it is gaining ground. The peptide business is booming, helped along by a recent decision from the Trump administration’s Food and Drug Administration to reclassify a number of substances that have long resided in a legally gray area. The government’s support doesn’t open the floodgates for the sale of those substances quite yet — an additional review process still needs to take place — but it highlights the government’s interest in deregulating the industry. 撇开 Enhanced 自身的困境不谈，其周边的行业正在取得进展。肽类药物业务正蓬勃发展，这得益于特朗普政府时期的 FDA 最近决定对一些长期处于法律灰色地带的物质进行重新分类。政府的支持虽然尚未完全打开这些物质的销售闸门——仍需经过额外的审查程序——但这凸显了政府对该行业去监管化的兴趣。

The FDA’s parent agency, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is notably overseen by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has long been known for his unconventional views on health. Kennedy’s ideas have been castigated by health professionals both inside and outside of the government who have routinely characterized his thinking as thinking as dangerous — criticism that hasn’t slowed the industry’s momentum. 值得注意的是，FDA 的上级机构美国卫生与公众服务部由小罗伯特·肯尼迪（Robert F. Kennedy Jr.）领导，他长期以来以其非传统的健康观点而闻名。肯尼迪的理念遭到了政府内外卫生专业人士的抨击，他们经常将其思想描述为“危险的”——但这种批评并没有减缓该行业的发展势头。

Silicon Valley remains one of the hotbeds for peptide startups, where companies like Superpower and Noho Labs are capitalizing on the tech industry’s penchant for biohacking and trendy health supplements. And the sector’s growth is outpacing the rules meant to govern it, with state governments struggling to keep up with regulatory schemes. 硅谷仍然是肽类初创企业的温床，Superpower 和 Noho Labs 等公司正利用科技行业对生物黑客和流行健康补剂的偏好来获利。该行业的增长速度已经超过了旨在监管它的规则，各州政府在制定监管方案方面正疲于奔命。