Coming to a purpose-built venue behind Resorts World on May 24, the Enhanced Games are a daylong high-performance sports event featuring 50 athletes competing in swimming, track and weightlifting, with one key difference from other such events: Athletes are allowed, even encouraged, to use performance-enhancing substances—testosterone, anabolic steroids (such as nandrolone), peptide hormones and growth factors, hormone and metabolic modulators, and stimulants (such as Adderall). It stands in opposition to competitions like the Olympic Games, which has banned such substances.

Backed by a consortium that includes Palantir’s Peter Thiel, Saudi Arabia’s Prince Khaled bin Alwaleed bin Talal Al-Saud and Donald Trump Jr., the Enhanced Games are positioning themselves not just as a sporting event, but as a promotional function for longevity medicine telehealth platform Enhanced Inc.; as a scientific demonstration of what these substances are capable of when their use is carefully monitored; and as a rebuke to the under-compensation of amateur athletes, says Chris Jones, Enhanced Games’ chief communications officer.

“Our athletes are paid salaries that are typically, depending on where they’re from, three to five times more than what they would get from the governing [athletic] body of their respective country,” Jones says. “They include health insurance, which many of them have never had in their lives.”

Aron D’Souza, founder of Enhanced, considers the games part of his mission “to build a new superhumanity.”

“Athletes are adults ... and they have a right to do with their body what they wish,” D’Souza told the Australian Associated Press in 2023. “No government, no paternalistic sports federation, should be making those decisions for athletes—particularly around products that are FDA regulated and approved.”

“What’s coming to Las Vegas I would call a bit sporting event, a bit music festival, and a bit WWE,” says Jones, noting large cash prizes for athletes who break performance records and a closing ceremony scheduled to feature The Killers.

For more information on the Enhanced Games, visit enhanced.com.