Can she bring more eyeballs in the US to figure skating? and butts in the seats? And all the other amazing US skaters benefit in her wake?
I think Alysa has brought more eyeballs to the sport, no doubt. But sustained, long term interest with beaucoup 'butts in the seats,' IMO, is not something that one very popular skater can do for an entire sport singlehandedly. After all, this is not the Sonja Henie era. Henie, with the help of her father, and her precocious talent, managed via her popularity to save the Winter Olympics, which had been in danger of being eliminated. I read about that history on Ryan Stevens' skateguardblog.
In this day and age, the sport has to do more to bring and sustain popular interest. While there seems to be awareness of the need for change and new ways of thinking to build a wider fan base, the sport's handlers, IMO, still lack vision and effective leadership. They aren't truly tackling the serious issues the sport continues to face on many levels. OTOH, I believe there are more young people who have recently been joining the figure skating fandom prior to the recent Olympics. Alysa's success at the Olympics, therefore occurred at a fortuitous time where there's a confluence of interest and activity on social media around skating. Still, the sport has to do a better job of educating the public about figure skating, promoting the sport more effectively, and tackling serious ongoing problems in the sport that need resolution.
The huge interest in Alysa for sure translates to the sport, but how to quantify exact measures, meaning, and significance? IMO, the interest is more about Alysa, her charisma, her edgy, unflustered personality, and her unbothered approach to pursuing her career on her own terms. She's tapped into a cultural Zeitgeist, which is all about this radical moment in youth culture in the era of social media and the Internet.
Many of Alysa's fans, as
@rabidline alluded to, do not know much about Alysa's background and her arc growing up in the sport. Older fans remember when she broke onto the scene as a junior, largely because U.S. fed bust a gut falling over themselves to anoint a young phenom with quads and triple axels to compete with Eteri's Russian 'baby ballerinas' (not an accurate moniker, but it stuck). Nevermind that Alysa at 13 did not have full command of her jumps, which she often tended to UR. My opinion is that the adulation and over-rewarding was premature. But Alysa was a natural even then with the media. She did not have artistry on the ice, yet. But she possessed a lot of confidence and natural charm.
What impressed me is how after Alysa lost her money jumps which had still been developing as she went through puberty, she was able to come back and succeed on a more artistic level with the help of Massimo Scali, Jeremy Abbott, et al. Not many skaters could have survived intact the difficult period Alysa went through. I think it also later helped Alysa to leave the sport and enjoy being a teenager. And then, she decided to come back on her own terms. It seems as if she was born under a lucky star, because her story is very much about the right things happening at the right time. That's due to hard work, as well as self-belief, and nonchalant ease in the public sphere.
www.billboard.com
most people will have moved on by next week. And most of the interest is on Alysa herself and her unique personality, not the actual sport.I guarantee you, 99% of the people who followed her on insta will not be tuning into comps or buying tickets. And on that note, it will be very hard for the sport to gain popularity in the USA until the music right issue is sorted. What's the point of Peacock streaming comps when they only stay up for a few days? Not to mention videos being posted on yt only to then be deleted after amassing millions of views 
