I don't even know how to start this, but here goes. Been skiing tournament for a long time. Been to nationals and qualify every year but haven't gone in a long time. I'm also on the promo team. There has been a lot of threads about building our sport and also the promo boat system. I feel like WE have to come at this from the other side, both on the building our sport and the promo boats, but I feel they are linked.
When I started skiing there where 2 tournament near me that were not AWSA and on public water. 50% of the skiers either never saw a course or the only time was during this tournament. The had about 100 people at the tournament. Also my first tournament was on open water. Pretty nice spot for wind and boats, but still had them. Now every tournament that I go to is in a private pond. I and all of us love skiing on a pond. Perfect water, no wind, warm and soft. Usually in the middle of a field but always with nobody watching except skiers and their family's. So if we want to build our sport we need to have events where the people are.
Next is the boats. I hear a lot of what are they going to do for us, but what are we doing for them? I did a factory tour last week. It was very cool and I loved it, but was very sad to hear how few "ski" boat are being made. They are mostly wake/surf boats. So what are we doing in our sport to support the manufactures and dealers. The biggest problem with the old Promo program was that it bypassed the dealers. All of us skiers would never go to a dealer to buy a boat, we would look for a promo boat to buy. Also we now do all of our tournaments on man made ponds with no spectators or TV coverage why would any of them want to have a promo boat there.
I have this place in my town that would be a good site for a tournament and there is a summer festival every July. I think about running a tournament there all the time, but I know all the skier will hate the current, backwash and wind, including me. The one tournament that does this is Moomba. That is what we need to do. Just my two cents.