Why water skiing is not on ESPN

[Horton]

I have to say I am a little sick of reading comments/questions about why we are not on ESPN like in the 1980s. Here is the deal as I understand it.

 

ESPN produces, sells advertising for and broadcasts major sports. That is the big money along with all the sports news content.

 

Smaller sports have to BUY the air time and then sell the advertising to pay for it. So if you want water skiing on ESPN you need to call Ford or Anheuser Busch and get them to buy ads for the segment. Good luck with that. FYI we did not lose WaterSkiMag because of a lack of readers we lost the mag for a lack of advertisers. ( If someone in the sports TV wants to correct this or fill in some details let me know. )

 

We now have very good web casts thanks mostly to TWBC and we should be happy. No we do not have non-skiers finding the sport but it is what it is.

 

[cougfan]

@Horton agree with you 100% The big money is in the broadcasts of college and pro football college and pro basketball. I don’t think ESPN is interested in any other “minor sport” that doesn’t bring them in a bunch of $$. Thank goodness for the TWBC web casts they are really top notch!

[igkya]

How is Cornhole big $$$?

[vtmecheng]

The part I don't understand is that ESPN does have minor sports on their online platform. Is that also payed for by the small sport? Don't get me wrong, I like what TWDC is doing and how far they come, they keep getting better. That said, there is a benefit to getting on an online network like ESPN. It gets more people viewing the sport.

[Zman]

Because ESPN could never match the quality, interesting and knowledgeable commentary, and fun that TWBC brings to their webcasts.

[Horton]

@vtmecheng It is my understanding that those smaller sports buy the air time and sell the advertising.

[rawly]

Hey @ESPNSkier , you are an insider. Any thoughts on this ? Thanks

[lpskier]

I did notice that drone racing is now on TV. Maybe right after poker.

[oldjeep]

Corn hole is on ESPN. Although I suspect it has more people interested in watching it than waterskiing.

 

My .02 - you want skiing on TV, try to hook it in with a gravity game type event - slalom and jump and forget about trick.

[S1Pitts]

I watch a LOT of RedBull TV. After watching the latest broadcast, this production would fit right in on that channel and expose a lot of people to the sport. They not only showcase different sports types but spot light the people and personalities in it. We have TWBC and Marcus Brown already doing that. We just need a couple of the top elite skiers to get supported by Red Bull and it would hopefully take off.

[jpwhit]

I can see that there are ad agencies and businesses that would be willing to buy ads during Cornhole broadcasts. Part of what creates demands for business to buy ads, is being about to get their heads around the demographics of who would be watching the broadcasting. I bet Ad agencies can get their heads around the demographics of the viewers of Cornhole. I bet similarly, they have no idea for competitive water skiing.

[bishop8950]

What about a step in this direction through the ESPN streaming content. I personally haven’t looking into this but I though they have a channel with access to webcast type events and smaller sports. Would The current waterski webcasts fit in there?

[BMG73]

The espn days were great but what we have now is way better thanks to TWBC! We really never saw much on espn. The best part is I don’t have to try and figure out how to set up auto record on my vcr!

[Than_Bogan]

The stuff TWBC produces is literally broadcast to the world. With a Roku you can go to YouTubeTV and search it up and watch it.

 

I'm FAR from an expert, but I feel like some of the ESPN discussion is a little misplaced. A modern audience is totally comfortable to watch it on youtube -- if they know about it and care about it! So shouldn't the discussion focus more on the promotion than on what network? Or is the assumption that being associated with ESPN is the most effective form of promotion?

[Skoot1123]

Kids these days - it is apparent to me that most everything from a media and entertainment standpoint is going towards a streaming type of format.

 

Good point @Than_Bogan - ESPN may not be the most effective way to get this to the masses anymore.

[rayn]

I think this falls into, "be careful what you ask for" I love the current TWBC broadcasts - they are meant for me/us(Hard core ski enthusiasts). In the other thread we keep asking for more and more technical stuff (pull strength, ZO setting, boat path), the viewing public probably does not care about any of that. They want competition, drama, a story if you will.

 

So producing a show for the masses is not going to please this audience, we are getting what we want now thanks to the TWBC team and thanks to them for that.

[RGilmore]

You can get almost ANYTHING on television if you bring "them" two important things: 1) a completed content package, and 2) advertising. A semi-example of this is the show "How It's Made", which is produced by the Canadian company 'Productions MAJ, Inc.'. If you've seen the show you'll know that it features various manufacturing companies doing their thing, with detailed footage of how those companies manufacture their product(s).

 

In the US, Productions MAJ provides completed episodes (plus some advertisers) to 'The Science Channel', who also has their own stable of advertisers. Interestingly, a portion of each episode ($25k last I checked) is put up by each of the manufacturers featured in that episode.

 

SO, if someone was motivated enough, they could probably "get water skiing on television" by putting together 1) content, by partnering with TWBC, MB, etc. and 2) advertising solicited from industry manufacturers (SN, MC, Radar, etc), watersports retailers (Perfski), and general sports-related companies (Under Armour, Oakley, etc) and similar. This would be a huge undertaking, and would undoubtedly require a single (or group) patron who was not afraid to lose money for a while - or maybe NEVER realize an actual profit.

[ESPNSkier]

As @rawly notes, I'm an ESPN "insider", however, I'm in Production Safety & Health and Programming (where these decisions are made) is a totally different world. @Horton is correct that most of our programming revolves around big money pro sports and NCAA sports although we do still produce ESPN Owned and Operated events such as X Games, NCAA tournaments and NCAA Bowl Games. Our industry was hit hard when sports shut down in the early spring and we did offer some interesting ESPN 8 "The Ocho" content such as corn hole. I doubt that we'll see water skiing back on ESPN or other major broadcasters but fortunately great alternatives now exist.

[Horton]

@RGilmore when you find somebody who will just throw money away let me know.

[kurtis500]

The first post is true.... I raced for 18 years in the IHBA then LODBRS (Drag boat racing) with air time on ESPN, MAVTV and even CBS Saturday afternoon. The crowds at a few of our races were way over 15,000+ per day. In the 80's over 20k at Firebird. Getting on TV requires a tight connection with the media outlets and a lot of money to broadcast your sport. In a nutshell, getting your sport on TV is a form of advertising. If you want free coverage that is generally what happens when the local news shows up and does a 15-30 second spot on the evening news. The media companies have to make money DURING the show and that comes from advertisers, usually those directly sponsoring teams within the sport. Many of our fellow racers sponsors were oil companies and etc. My guess is for a TV spot to happen you will need the corporate money from the boat manufacturers since they generally have the amount of advertising dollars to make it happen. With tournament skiing being such a small segment of their sales its highly unlikely. Just enjoy it as is, when Lucas Oil bought out the IHBA and brought money and etc. to the sport it made racing way more difficult since they nationalized the races making people drop more $$$ to get to races.. Knocked out a bunch of us, same will happen with with tournament style skiing. Even worse, the more intense schedule to promote the sport will push more athletes in to injury.

[UCFskier]

cable is dead.... I absolutely love the format by TWBC. By skiers for skiers. the online format is easy to stream and forward to any television.

[oldjeep]

I think that 80 million people would disagree about cable being dead ;)

 

[unksskis]

Thank you @Horton , this stuff gets really old to read. The MC Pro was an amazing webcast, I think the AMAZING competition had a lot to do with that. That was the best Pro tournament in years regarding competition, edge of your seat waiting until the end. As Horton states, it's sponsors, if people want to pick on cornhole look at all the sponsors on their shirts, the boards, the banners. I also agree that ESPN shouldn't even be the goal and not sure why it continues to be brought up, streaming is the way things are moving towards, and I think a good example is ESPN moving many football games to ESPN+ which requires monthly membership. This is a way to force membership in my opinion, leveraging their conference football media contracts. All that said, there is not a lot of positive feedback when one's football team is relegated to ESPN+. I like the Redbull TV or similar idea. The joy of the TWBC being on Youtube is I could watch it on any smart tv, tablet or phone, didn't require any special package or membership. The only down side to this past weekend's event was I didn't think it was advertised enough for how great it was.

[vtmecheng]

@rayn I actually find the pull load, heart rate, and speed/acceleration information great for discussing pro skiing with my non-skiing friends. They can't get a feel for the speed, strength, and skill just by watching. Many understand force from basic lifting and speed is easy to picture. A force at your hands and through your legs while trying to move through boat wakes at crazy speeds is what makes it interesting. The more tangible competitive numbers, multiple views, and personal interviews the better. It's what today's sports viewers are used to.

[jcamp]

@Horton @RGilmore was not advocating throwing a bunch of money at getting skiing on ESPN, he/she was simply stating that one could in fact do it if they brought enough cash to the table and pointing out they the reality that it would probably be a money loser.

 

 

[dvskier]

I appreciate the TWBC and their outstanding work to deliver an unparalleled webcast. ESPN would simply offer a highly condensed product even if they were to ever consent to waterskiing. Let’s be thankful for what we have now. I watched the entire webcast live and it was spectacular

Now if we could only convince Tony Lightfoot that he is broadcasting in the USA and to announce in feet that would be appreciated. I can easily convert to metric but prefer our units of measurement.

[MDB1056]

Very surprised to see this old topic back again. It’s pure numbers. Viewership isn’t there to support advertisers. They can get far better ratios elsewhere. Pure cost/benefit.

[Wish]

TWBC .....where else would you learn the metric system...ESPN?.. I don't think so.

 

In all seriousness, web casting with TWBS seems to be the way to go and grow evidenced by the steep trajectory to improving the webcast already in just a few short years. Also evidenced by the many comments here saying it's already ESPN worthy in terms quality. And we for the first time EVER have access to make suggestions almost directly to TWBC on the programming itself. Try that with ESPN.

 

Not wanting to open a can of warms here but I'd suggest $$s matter. If 1000 people watch ( I think I heard it was close to that if not more) then would we be willing to pay $1.00 or even $2.00 to view? Sure doesn't sound like a lot to me but pretty sure it would go a loooooong way to cover costs for TWBC as well as to making improvements along the way. The quality now sure seems to be at the pay per view level.

[Horton]

@wish pay-per-view would actually mean a smaller audience. I believe that would defeat the purpose.

[Keith_Menard]

Let's do a safety check on this thread....

 

As someone else said...cable is dead. The future really is in on-line, so the question is how do you get more people to watch what we have...not change to someone else. I really believe TWBC is putting out and awesome product and is going to continue to improve it.

 

I think if you want to grow the broadcast you have to delve a little more into the human interest side (ala Allie Nicholson and the nursing aspect, Elizabeth Montavon and the way she has transformed herself through hard work, Whitney and Paige, etc) and you have to get way more technical on the replays and break it down the way a football announcer would with a Terry Winter drawing on the screen, a boat driver replay, behind the scenes with gear setup and manufacturing...there are just so may places they can take this so that you don't have to be a hardcore skier to 'get it'. Some is really low hanging cheap fruit, others are obviously more money.

 

As I said though, this is the future and they are building something awesome!

[A_B]

It is a sad state when 3 people screaming in the woods at night looking for Bigfoot can run for several seasons and we can't even get a World or Masters shown on ESPNII....

[vtmecheng]

I definitely agree that streaming is the future. The real challenge is how to get noticed among the crowd of content.

 

In the end, I'm just happy we can watch pro events at home. Like many, I love the increases in quality and if I catch it a few hours after the start it's easy to fast forward.

[jcamp]

Even if water skiing was on ESPN none of us would watch it because they'd air it five days (if not more) after the event and we'd all know who won already.

[ScottScott]

The viewing audience has transformed from one that watches what is available to having so much available that they search out what they want to watch. No-one is going to watch ANYTHING on ESPN just because its there (many of us saw that corn hole was on ESPN...but really, how was its ratings, how many of us sat and watched.) They will watch something that is streamed or on a more obscure network because they searched it out and thats where it is. The streaming world is fine to broadcast it, we just need more people to search to find it. A good/simple way to start that is through social media....all of us make sure to spread the word that it is happening and available for them to watch, share events and links.

[Timr71]

ESPN has a myriad of serious problems to deal with. And worrying about weather to broadcast waterskiing or not is not one of them. BTW, water skiing and Australian rules football along with other strange things were staples of ESPN programming back in the days where they had to search to find content to fill the broadcast schedule. Eventually they managed to attain broadcast rights for all of the major stick and ball sports and that stuff fell by the way side.

 

Right now, Disney may be looking to sell off ESPN completely because the severe loss of subscribers is creating a financial drain of the whole company. Then pile on the Covid impact to the park business and movies and it's not a good picture. But don't take my word for it:

 

ESPN reported that subscribers dropped 4.5% in Q1 2020. Previously, the loss was 4.0% in Q4 2019 and 2.5% in Q3 2019.

 

Disney acknowledged the loss in ESPN revenue in their first quarter earnings report, citing an increase in costs and lower viewership.

 

The decrease at ESPN was due to an increase in programming and production costs and lower advertising revenue, partially offset by higher affiliate revenue. Higher programming and production costs were driven by rate increases for NFL, College Football Playoffs and other college sports programming as well as costs for the ACC Network, which launched in August 2019. The decrease in advertising revenue was due to lower average viewership. Affiliate revenue growth was due to an increase in contractual rates, partially offset by a decrease in subscribers. The decrease in subscribers was net of the impact of the ACC Network.

 

[UCFskier]

This might be a silly question... but who even watches ESPN? I get all my football from DAZN app.

I know the older crowd (myself included) feels that a network coverage would add legitimacy to the sport. that being said, I far prefer the TWBC where there is 100% coverage as opposed to a saleable 30min digested version for a network.

[Hallpass]

If ever there were an activity that implores beer (Anhauser Busch) and bratwurst (Johnsonville) sponsors to step forward, it is Cornhole. Not even difficult to see why Cornhole is on television. Just sayin'.

[RGilmore]

@Horton - Which part of what I posted do you consider so stupid that it deserves a Panda? - I DID, after all, point out that someone trying to follow a known path for getting something onto television might never see a positive ROI - which I assume is your exact point as well.

 

As for people who will "just throw money away", you probably don't know this, but in the motion-picture industry MOST investors in any given film project will lose much (if not all) of their investment. They usually have other motives, such as adding a "Producer" title to their resume, or promoting an up-and-coming actor they have a personal interest in, or whatever. The point being, out in the real world there are a LOT of people who will "just throw money away" for whatever crazy reason works for them. Who knows if there's someone sitting on a pile of Daddy's money who might just love waterskiing enough to throw [away] money at it...

[RAWSki]

People are right skiing doesn't need ESPN and ESPN doesn't need or want skiing.... the start up sports network showed skiing back in the day because it had sponsors like Ford and Coors Light with commercial money behind them. And ESPN could package the programs for "off nights" when there wasn't any other sports. Major sports were owned by ABC, CBS, and NBC. Now ESPN(ABC) + FOX and the others are all major players so they don't need filler sports---- it's cheaper to stage a talk show about football than shoot a fringe sport on location. We occasionally get snow skiing because US Networks can pick up the European coverage, and sell advertising.

[Horton]

@RGilmore I know some extremely wealthy people including people in the entertainment world and I have never met anyone who is willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars with no ROI. I mean if somebody hits their head on a brick, has severe brain damage and then and writes a check to ESPN it could happen. The whole point of this thread is to remind people that is frankly not plausible unless somebody is living out their own version of Brewster's Millions.

 

[DHski]

+1 on the love for TWBC and that we don't need / shouldn't want ESPN at this point.

 

+1 on waterskiing is perfect for RedBull. They seem to sponsor and push the most random sports and activities that I can't imagine have a bigger natural following than waterkskiing. If the financials work out for all that stuff, surely it could work for waterskiing. But I wonder how that arrangement would get started in a way that has synergy with TWBC ?

[Horton]

@DHski you don't think some one in skiing has already called RedBull? Dorien Llewellyn has some sort of deal with them. I think it hinges on the fact that his mother is Austrian and has connections inside the company.

[MattP]

@Horton Britta is an Athlete Manager for Red Bull.

 

ESPN 3 (online) carried the 2009 worlds in Canada if I remember correctly. I don’t remember the story of how that came about.

 

I’m fine with any online platform that can carry skiing. It is the “future”

 

I get the water sports channel on tv and they have a shot of Freddy jumping in their opening montage more than likely from a World Cup stop in Russia. I’m sure that relationship is long gone.

[kurtis500]

So which company(s) that are just slalom skiing specific have the dough to even do a large media contract?

[RGilmore]

@Horton- I don't even like arguing in person, let alone online, but I also don't enjoy being called a liar. So I'll just respond once here and then be done with this discussion. And, by the way, although I have worked peripherally in television and on a few Hollywood films during my long life, I've never invested in either. So I'll leave you to argue with someone who really does know what he's talking about in the film industry.

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/schuylermoore/2019/01/03/most-films-lose-money/#8324dfa739f2

 

In case you don't want to read the article, I'll summarize it for you (spoiler alert): about 80% of all commercial film projects lose money. Now, who's money do you suppose is lost? I can tell you - it's the investors. And they absolutely know the likelihood that most projects will lose money. They invest anyway. Go figure.

[6balls]

@hallpass agree on cornhole. It's a drinking sport for most, doesn't cost much, anyone can try it and mostly not make a total yutz of themselves...and if they do who cares we are back to drinking sport...an no one gets hurt. So people can relate, just might watch, and there are ready sponsors. I'm pretty amazed at the 4-holers those pro's throw as a decent athlete who has played some myself--having said that it keeps my attention for about 2 rounds on TV...then I endlessly search for waterskiing :)

The streams have been good for our skiing community...and that's the community that matters.

[NameUnavailable]

My .02

I hosted two Coors Light Waterski Tour Stops back way back when. I think when we lost the fact that it was more of a show than a competition is when it went south. People came to Wichita Ks on a river to see a show of Bare footing, Jet skiing, and water skiing. The conditions sucked, but the crowd was huge(thousands)...Bob, Kris, Sammy, Lucky, Carl, Mike, etc were rock stars with posters to sign. There were thousands that watched in Oklahoma City stops too. When was the last time more than a few hundred showed up for any waterski tournament? Maybe the time has gone, or maybe we get too caught up in can I break a record vs. visibility/making the skiers $.

[Than_Bogan]

@RGilmore imo Pandas are intended to be slightly embarrassing but more so FUN. I mean that guy is so damn cute! So anyhow, don't get too stressed by it or take it too seriously.

[jpwhit]

Seems like @Horton started this thread so folks would think about the business realities of why you're not likely to see skiing on ESPN. But if feels like there are two completely different topics at play here that are being intermingled.

 

If the skiing community wants access to be able to see the events for their own personal enjoyment, then I think streaming is the clear answer.

 

If the skiing community wants to see skiing events on mainstream media for the purpose of promoting and growing the sport, then I personally think this is pragmatically an unrealistic way to promote the sport in this day and age.

 

Myself, I put my energies into teaching young people to ski the course this year. Some friends and I got a course setup on a large public lake this year. Anytime a boat came by and watched or looked like they had interest in the course we'd drive over and talk to them. Over the course of the summer, we ended up getting 7 different teenage kids to start coming out to join us and to start learning to ski the course. 4 of them had never even slalomed before this summer and 3 of the 4 are already running the mini course. We have 1 family that has sold their wake/surf boat and bought a ski boat instead. And there are 2 other families looking to do the same....

 

I still really enjoy skiing at my private ski club lake, but I now equally enjoy being out on the public lake teaching new people to ski the course.

[Horton]

@RGilmore I do not relate to your experience but I am not calling you a liar. What I am suck of is skiers relentlessly opining that if I or someone would just make enough phone calls we could be on TV and it would be great. If it can be done I want to see it.

 

Also one 22 minute segment on water skiing on ESPN would have almost no value long term.