NEW YORK, NY.- Once Snoop Dogg had waded through electrical cords on the floor and ambled his lanky frame around the disorderly equipment in a partially constructed television studio in Paris, he was able to peer out over a balcony overlooking the Eiffel Tower and survey the city he hopes to conquer during the Olympics.

“This is my home,” he said triumphantly to himself. Below, a handful of people flashed their phones.

The man whom NBCUniversal hopes will become the breakout star of the Paris Games was right where he wanted to be.

The Olympics are always about the athletes, and as usual the focus this year will be on the brightest ones: Simone Biles, Katie Ledecky, Noah Lyles, Novak Djokovic, LeBron James.

But the event’s billing as the pinnacle of athletic achievement has not been enough to prevent NBC’s Olympics television ratings from skidding amid a fractured media landscape, and the network hopes Snoop Dogg’s aura as one of the most recognized and beloved figures in pop culture will energize viewers of all ages.

Ratings for the Summer Games have dropped steadily since an average of 31.1 million prime-time viewers watched the 2012 London Olympics. NBC executives cite pandemic-related restrictions and an unfavorable time zone for Americans as reasons the Tokyo Games averaged 15.5 million prime-time viewers, its lowest audience ever.

Snoop Dogg’s highly publicized appointment expands a smaller role he had during the Tokyo Games in 2021, hosting a lighthearted recap commentary show on streaming platform Peacock with comedian Kevin Hart. Some sequences went viral, including when Snoop Dogg compared a horse’s slanted trotting in a dressage competition to “crip walking,” the dance named after the West Coast street gang.

“It just resonated with people, and we realized that comedy and humor should be a part of the fabric of the prime-time show,” said Molly Solomon, who is the executive producer and president of NBC Olympics Production and will be Snoop Dogg’s de facto boss for two weeks.

Olympic broadcasts once helmed by venerable newsmen and morning show hosts will now prominently feature a rapper whose career-defining songs refer to alcohol (“Gin and Juice”) and promiscuity (“Drop It Like It’s Hot”). It’s the latest chapter of Snoop Dogg’s three-decade ascent: Starting as a profane, marijuana-loving musician, he has also become a versatile, jovial, marijuana-loving mainstream personality, a ubiquitous pitchman, actor, philanthropist and entrepreneur.

In the days before the opening ceremony, Snoop Dogg, who was an Olympic torchbearer, visited wrestlers, basketball players and other athletes, and many of them posted those moments on social media. Solomon and other NBC brass giddily took a picture with him on the set.

Snoop Dogg, whose real name is Calvin Broadus, said he appreciated the buttoned-up style that Bob Costas and other broadcasters had displayed when he watched the Olympics growing up in Long Beach, California, near Los Angeles. But he said that he would not emulate them and instead unapologetically add his own flair, in a family-friendly way.

“We respected them and loved their perspective, but moving forward, it’s like, ‘OK, whose voice is the people’s voice right now?’” Snoop Dogg said in an interview in June. He spoke from a leather-padded sofa-like seat in a luxury van parked between production trailers at the U.S. Olympic track and field team trials in Eugene, Oregon.

He added: “They’re invested in me being me, and that’s what I love about them because they don’t want me to water down anything or to be something I’m not — they want Snoop Dogg.”

NBC and Snoop Dogg, a 16-time Grammy-nominated artist, prepared for Paris during the track trials, held at the leafy University of Oregon campus. To the surprise of hundreds of spectators that dreary June morning at the glistening Hayward Field, Snoop Dogg ran a gimmick 200-meter dash. He swung his slender arms stiffly and smirked as he circled the track, then anchored his hands to his hips, exhaling deeply.

Most Olympians cross the 200-meter finish line in around 21 seconds. Snoop Dogg did so in 34.44 seconds, a marker he was proud of given his age (52) and lack of track experience.

“My thighs are sore,” Snoop Dogg told NBC Sports analyst Ato Boldon, a four-time Olympic medalist from Trinidad and Tobago who raced with him. Boldon jeered that they should have run the 100 instead. After he stopped for selfies — “Snoop for president!” one fan shouted — he retreated to the van, where he napped undisturbed for about an hour. His body needed to recover.

“I’m a relaxed, calm, no-pressure, no-stress individual — that’s high pressure and high stress,” Snoop Dogg said. He wore a red-white-and-blue sweatsuit with a T-shirt honoring Kobe Bryant underneath a personalized jacket bearing the NBC logo. “You don’t want to lose, you want to get a good time, you have to focus on turning — it’s just a lot. But I wanted to run it because I’m an athlete and I wanted to see what my time would look like as a senior citizen.”

NBC distributed his race footage widely. A camera crew will similarly follow him in Paris, where he will roam the city, watch competitions with athletes’ families and more. Those segments will air during the nightly prime-time show, where he will regularly appear alongside veteran sportscaster Mike Tirico.

“You see how intentional he is in being successful,” Tirico said. “A person with that big of a name can just show up, but he’s here putting the work in.”

Solomon, the NBC producer, and Snoop Dogg crafted his open-ended, fluid position in a series of meetings, including an in-person, half-day summit in April at his Los Angeles compound. He was inquisitive, Solomon said, asking about the new sports approved by the International Olympic Committee — he said he is excited to watch break dancing. They also reviewed computer-generated imagery of the opening ceremony’s path along the Seine.

Solomon said Snoop Dogg’s assignments would be planned on a spreadsheet about two days in advance, but he said he would also wing it.

“I’d rather be underprepared because then I can always come up with something to fill in the blanks,” he said. “To me, the events, the athletes — they will create what I’m supposed to be.”

Snoop Dogg already has credibility in the broadcast booth. Professional leagues for years have allowed him to provide play-by-play commentary, sometimes plucking him from his arena seat when he attended games as a fan.

“What is that, the take-the-booty position?” Snoop Dogg asked as two men wrestled during an Ultimate Fighting Championship show. “He’s sliding on ice like a pair of dice,” Snoop Dogg said during an NHL game in 2021. “He got a rocket in his pocket,” he said in June while briefly announcing a Major League Baseball game.

“I think that’s what people love about me, is that it’s organic and it’s real,” Snoop Dogg said. “It’s like if your uncle or your father watches the game the same way Snoop does and speaks the same way and you feel connected.”

NBC is looking to create similar connections with other celebrities. After conducting market research that found that many people said pop culture drives their everyday conversation, the company will deploy podcast star Alex Cooper, singer and talk-show host Kelly Clarkson, comedian Leslie Jones and others across its platforms before and during the Games.

John Skipper, who is the former president of ESPN and co-founder of Meadowlark Media studio, said NBC’s strategy should be effective and was a sound business decision. NBC has domestically televised the Olympics exclusively since 1988 and paid over $7 billion for those rights from 2022 to 2032.

“The Olympics in some ways is NBC’s most important sports brand association,” Skipper said. The company recently purchased media rights for the NBA and also broadcasts the NFL, Premier League soccer and the Kentucky Derby. “They have plenty of incentives to do everything they can to keep it relevant and keep an audience engaged.”

While he is still fulfilling his Paris responsibilities, Snoop Dogg is already looking ahead. He said he would like to be included in the network’s coverage for the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles. “It makes sense,” he said. Solomon said, with a laugh, that she could use him at the 2026 Winter Games in Italy, too.

“This is not a one-off,” Snoop Dogg said. “This is not me coming in to save the day. This is something we are building.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.