The killing of fan support in America

[notorious]

Excellent article. Everything is on point here
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http://www.trackalerts.com/news/lead-st ... in-america

In the US, the turnout for track meets at the International level are greatest where there is a strong contingent of Jamaican nationals.

Penn Relays is by far the biggest and the stadium is filled with the vast majority being Jamaicans; the same goes for the annual International (Adidas) meet at Icahn Stadium in New York. Oregon seems to have great fan support but not the turnout of a Penn Relays.

The problem with low US fan support I believe, comes about through (1) the US Federation's' lack of ability or will, or both to sell the sports. (2) The US athletes themselves and (3) The US journalist who covers the sports.

[Marlow]

Re: The killing of fan support in America

There's all sorts of complexly interesting reasons why track athletes aren't seen as great endorsement opportunities, but the bottom line is that the market is very savvy in its ability to discern an athlete's worth, and in most cases, whatever an athlete gets is directly proportional to his/her ability to sell a product. It's simple 'supply and demand', and no one really 'demands' track athletes. It's too much of a niche sport and most people can't 'identify' (crucial to the sales pitch) with elite T&F athletes. Running shoes is about the only salable area that this works in.

[Dilan Esper]

Re: The killing of fan support in America

Excellent article. Everything is on point here
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http://www.trackalerts.com/news/lead-st ... in-america

The US is currently the biggest consumer market in the world, yet US athletes are not consistently raking in millions in endorsements.

Apart from the sponsorship Nike and Addidas provides, track and field athlete's earnings mostly come from meets they participate in around the world

I suspect that there are ways to market the sport in America, but there's a chicken-and-egg problem here. Someone is going to have to take a risk and plunk down a bunch of money on an untried marketing concept, and then it would have to succeed or we are back to square one again.

The event I always have in the back of my mind was the silly Donovan Bailey - Michael Johnson match race at the Toronto SkyDome over 150 meters. They matched it up with a few elite field events and drew a boatload of people (unfortunately the event became a farce when Johnson had his de rigueur pull-up during the race).

THAT'S how you get 35,000 people to a track meet. Come up with a compelling event, drum up interest, and then don't load the thing up with too many events or try to hold a traditional meet.

[kuha]

Re: The killing of fan support in America

The event I always have in the back of my mind was the silly Donovan Bailey - Michael Johnson match race at the Toronto SkyDome over 150 meters.THAT'S how you get 35,000 people to a track meet. Come up with a compelling event, drum up interest, and then don't load the thing up with too many events or try to hold a traditional meet.

But that's the real point: not only was that not a "traditional meet", it wasn't a track meet at all! So, in other words, it's possible to get the larger public interested in seeing track athletes as long as it is NOT in the context of a traditional meet. And that's the death of the sport, as traditionally understood. Not a good thing.

[Dilan Esper]

Re: The killing of fan support in America

The event I always have in the back of my mind was the silly Donovan Bailey - Michael Johnson match race at the Toronto SkyDome over 150 meters.THAT'S how you get 35,000 people to a track meet. Come up with a compelling event, drum up interest, and then don't load the thing up with too many events or try to hold a traditional meet.

But that's the real point: not only was that not a "traditional meet", it wasn't a track meet at all! So, in other words, it's possible to get the larger public interested in seeing track athletes as long as it is NOT in the context of a traditional meet. And that's the death of the sport, as traditionally understood. Not a good thing.

I'm not sure that is true. Was the Battle of the Sexes King-Riggs match bad for tennis? Is the Skins Game bad for golf?

Gimmick events are a time-honored method of promotion. They don't replace the long-term project of building a fanbase, but they do get you attention. And in the United States, I would say that anything that gets track some positive attention is probably a good thing.

[Smoke]

Re: The killing of fan support in America

As in many conversations the confusion and progress in track and field is loss in the misinterpretation of either/or. Kuha it is not an either/or situation. The fact is these specialized events draw fans, they do not take away from a traditional track meet. They add fans. That is the point. Think of it in terms of promotion for an event, you generally want 25% of those that RSVP, if I can get 25% of the 10k that come to these street races, to add to the track base of the next meet I will have filled the back stretch in Indy, Eugene, Austin, Home Depot, etc
However, we get so entrenched in this either/or mindset we miss out on the events that draw in the fans. The sports that have come up and remain on top have regular community events, etc. We need to also

[Daisy]

Re: The killing of fan support in America

The street event do seem to be good for the sport. Those downtown shot events really get the fans up close and allow them to appreciate the event properly. Same for hj and pv, the fans can see just how how those bars really are. It's far harder to tell when you're viewing at a distance in a stand.

[kuha]

Re: The killing of fan support in America

The fact is these specialized events draw fans, they do not take away from a traditional track meet. They add fans. That is the point.

I would respond that that is the GOAL, but whether it is actually successful is the real question. I'm all for street shot puts or pole vaults, and I've been the one consistently advocating for greater variety in the "standard" meet package--more 1000s, 2000s, miles, or, for that matter, a 600m every now and then. In truth, the meeting of two noted stars in a one-off event OUTSIDE the context of a genuine track meet has been done so few times that I'd suggest there's no empirical evidence to show that there is any real benefit to "the sport," proper. The danger, as I was suggesting, is that these completely artificial "events" could just as well take the place of a broad interest in a REAL track meet.

But again, I suspect there's not enough hard evidence to know what the effect of these things actually is.

[Ned Ryerson]

Re: The killing of fan support in America

1000s, 2000s, miles, or, for that matter, a 600m every now and then.

Tough when the uninitiated passerby sees Rudisha and Kirani James run 1:11.9 for 600m, but has to be told how good that is.

[KevinM]

Re: The killing of fan support in America

1000s, 2000s, miles, or, for that matter, a 600m every now and then.

Tough when the uninitiated passerby sees Rudisha and Kirani James run 1:11.9 for 600m, but has to be told how good that is.

An "uninitiated passerby" likely doesn't know how good 1:41 is, either. Not sure it really matters what the distance is.

[kuha]

Re: The killing of fan support in America

1000s, 2000s, miles, or, for that matter, a 600m every now and then.

Tough when the uninitiated passerby sees Rudisha and Kirani James run 1:11.9 for 600m, but has to be told how good that is.

An "uninitiated passerby" likely doesn't know how good 1:41 is, either. Not sure it really matters what the distance is.

Precisely. And for the umpteenth time, a distance like 600m achieves two really valuable things: a) it allows athletes to meet that otherwise probably never would (a 400 & an 800 specialist) and b) it puts all the emphasis on COMPETITION, rather than on time, since the times wouldn't mean that much to most folks anyway. Many here have been howling for years that the sport is "really" all about competition, not records or times per se. The odder the distance, the more pure competition matters, and the less anyone will be looking at the clock.

[az2004]

Re: The killing of fan support in America

jamaicans rae NOT the majority at penn relays..

i'm there every year

they're louder..

but in numbers maybe 30%

get the facts right

[notorious]

Re: The killing of fan support in America

jamaicans rae NOT the majority at penn relays..

i'm there every year

they're louder..

but in numbers maybe 30%

get the facts right

Not sure what you are smoking but the Jamaicans(and their supporters) outnumber the yanks by at least 2 to 1 at Penns and that is why the folks there cater to us so much more.

[bad hammy]

Re: The killing of fan support in America

There is general agreement that at the high school level track and field in the US is a wildly successful sport in terms of participation numbers, with well over a half-million athletes each year. What USATF is wildly unsuccessful at is getting these half-million athletes to become fans of the sport. How difficult should it be to get, say, half of high-school athletes to become longer-term fans of the sport (not asking for rabid fans here, just trying to get folks to actually pay attention)? Apparently it is pretty damn difficult. But the thing is, I’m not confident that anyone is really trying.

Randomly asked the one guy I know at work who had any T&F background (4:05 miler in college) about his lack of fandom (for instance, he had no idea who Rupp is – never heard of him). His take was that throughout high school and college there were pretty much zero efforts from anywhere to get him to look at T&F as a spectator sport – zero publicity of what is available. Sure, if we are interested we can track that stuff down, but you would think that as part of a high school and college team there could have been some effort to get these athletes to look around.

Now he’s just one guy (and a Raider fan, so he obviously has issues when it comes to fandom) but it points out what we already know – USATF sucks at marketing. If you can’t sell the sports to millions of participants and ex-participants, how are you going to sell it to the rest of the US?

[kuha]

Re: The killing of fan support in America

Bad hammy’s post above is excellent. There clearly is a huge problem when the vast majority of participants in the sport end up (very quickly) having no interest in it whatever. I know that there is a pretty clear psychological reason for this. In a discipline so precisely quantified (times and measurements), no one can long have any delusions about how good they “really” are in the great scheme of things. These qualitative differences are just as real in other sports, but they are masked by the relativity of the statistics involved (yards rushing per game depends totally on the quality of defenses routinely faced, etc.)

So, I understand something of the “defense mechanism” at work here, but it is still strange that so few current or former participants take ANY interest in the larger sport. This is a key group to address in any search for a larger fan base in the US, but there’s no obvious way to turn this around…