The Olympics are officially underway in Italy and on the 2026 TV schedule. This means two weeks' worth of fantastic sports that you rarely, if ever, get to watch otherwise. Competitors work tirelessly for this experience once every four years, and one figure skater who thought he had lost out on the Olympic experience he wanted has been saved, thanks to, among others, Pharrell Williams.
Tomás Guarino is a Spanish figure skater who has performed a short program in international competition this season that included music from the Despicable Me and Minions franchises, and even had him dressed in the trademark yellow and blue of the popular Minions characters. He recently announced that, despite submitting his music months ago, he was only recently informed that copyright rules were going to prevent him from using the music at the Olympics. However, in an update on Instagram, Guarino says the rights issues have been worked out. His statement reads in part…
I would like to thank ClicknClear and RFEDH for their work as well as Universal Pictures, Pharrell Williams, Sony Music and Juan Alcaraz for managing the music rights in such a short period of time so that I can perform my program in Milan.
Pharrell Williams’ song “Happy” was written for Despicable Me 2 and received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song. The piece is one of several pieces of music from the franchise that appeared during Tomás Guarino’s program. As such, Williams assistance was needed to clear any potential copyright issues.
Figure skating is already underway, and the Milan Winter Olympics and the Men’s Short Program is scheduled for February 10. There wasn’t a lot of time to get the approvals needed to make the program happen, and large corporations aren’t necessarily known for moving quickly, so it says something that Universal Pictures and Sony Music were able to mobilize to clear the way for the music to be used.
Universal also owns NBC, which is broadcasting the Olympics in the U.S. It’s unclear if that helped smooth things over. One has to believe that a Minions-themed figure skating routine might be something people would tune in to see, so it’s possible that people airing the Olympics wanted to see this happen.
I’m not even a big Minions fan, but I do love watching figure skating as part of my two-week binge of all things Olympics. I’ll be looking forward to seeing this routine. Figure skating is at its best when the participants are having fun, and this sounds like it will be a blast.
