How many sports are trying to build on unstable foundations?
In today’s ultra-competitive sporting world it is not just athletes vying for exposure and their share of the money. It is also sporting clubs and sporting associations vying for exposure in the media, as this in turn will bring in much needed sponsorship dollars. The premise being the more exposure the sport gains, the more sponsors they will attract.
Some players, clubs and associations have been known to purchase Twitter followers, Likes on Facebook in order to make sponsorship more appealing.
Former sprinter Michael Johnson made a very valid point in the past week in relation to this very issue and the profile of Athletics. He stated that it is time that the sport stood on its own too feet and stopped relying on personalities to raise its profile. He felt that never was there a better time following the retirement of Usain Bolt.
Johnson said that the sport needed to invest in fierce competition to make up for times when it would not have the personalities with interesting back stories to attract fans.
Not surprisingly he was asked whether sport did not need personalities in order to survive. His response was “I hear that a lot and I get it, I understand that. It definitely helps to have great personalities but sport shouldn’t rely on having personalities.”
“We may not always have them, sure there may be a rich period of time when there are many great personalities with back stories the media and fans are interested in, and then there may be a drought what do you do at that point? The sport should be able to stand on it’s own.” He added.
There are many of sports that have locked onto players with high social media profiles to piggyback on to gain publicity, but is this really the best option as Johnson states?
The problem is of course when these “chosen players” show a human side, and vent their spleen on Twitter or make an error of judgement in their personal lives. There have been plenty of them over the years. It may appear a cheap way of gaining publicity, but it can backfire horribly.
Michael Johnson stated that Athletics should rely on its unpredictability in order to sell tickets. What he means is the sporting contest is what should be promoted. This, as he said must be the core as to how to promote your sport. Few would disagree with that sentiment. There should be no need for each meet or round being give some tag to try and make it appeal to a section of the public.
“The anticipation of fans as to ‘who is going to win, we don’t know who is going to win?’ that’s why we watch. We don’t watch for the interview with the athlete and to hear their back story, that is the gravy on top.”
Maybe this is why we are seeing the crowds at live events starting to dwindle, the wrong aspects of the various sports are being promoted. Certainly few members of the youth today can name the players in the teams they support, many only know the big name players, those with the high profiles in social media, whose every sneeze is reported, because we are told that there is a market for such information.
Johnson said “I think we have to become relevant as I think that ship has sailed already. We are not gaining young fans. We have to figure how to do that how to become relevant to the new generation.”
This is a very valid point and not many sports have come up with the answer. We are told that the youth of today have a short attention span, so what do we do? We serve up bite-size versions of various sports. Yet very few young people pay to watch sport, it is their parents who pay, or their grandparents, and believe it or not many of them want to stick with the traditional forms of the game. Sure there is a place for T20 purely for entertainment value, but nothing beats a father and son walking to watch a Test match on the opening day and the son listening to Test matches of old that his father attended. That is why the game has survived, on that history, on those memories. As the great Barry Richards has always said if everyone who claims to have been at the WACA in 1970 when he hit an unbeaten 325 in a day for South Australia against Western Australia had been in the ground it would have been full three times over.
Football is the same, generations will recall going to their first game with their dad or it may not have been their dad, it could have been an older brother, but the magic of that first time is unbeatable. To make that experience all the more inexplicable is how we end up supporting a team. It was Nick Hornby in “Fever Pitch” that said that football loyalty “was not a moral choice like bravery or kindness; it was more like a wart or a hump, something you were stuck with.”
Sure many of the young fans today follow players rather than teams and that is what drives a players value up. With millions following Ronaldo, Neymar and Messi, and becoming them on Playstation, it is not surprising that if they leave a club a million fans will follow; They are simply being the players of today in their living rooms while the generations before were doing the same with a ball in the street in the playground, back garden or park.
What is hoped is that once sucked into a club by a Messi or Ronaldo fans will find it hard to change. No matter their age the true fans will stick to their team, no matter who leaves.
Each sport is unique in its own way. Each sport offers its fans something different. Each sport offers us the chance for us to marvel at people who can do things we only dreamed of. The chance to see the best challenge themselves against the best, and sometimes inadvertently representing us, our town, our city, our club or our country.
It is these athletes pitting themselves against the best in their era, and also against the best of former eras in our memories or in the record books that are the attraction. Not hybrid versions of the game that marketing consultants will tell you is the future. It is man against man, woman against woman, team against team. That battle to be the best, to claim the spoils, a cup a medal or simply bragging rights. The contest is what matters. This is what sells.
Michael Johnson was a superstar in his day. He promoted himself superbly. More importantly he backed himself. He did not make claims on Twitter he did his talking on the track.
By the time the 1996 Atlanta Olympics came around the fastest man in the world had not yet won an individual gold medal. Johnson decided he was going to chase an unprecedented double gold by winning the 200-metre and 400-metre races. Nobody had ever doubled in those two races at the Olympics before 1996, but Johnson took it one step further. He decided to work with his sponsor Nike and wear gold spikes in an effort to “call his shot” with the whole world watching.
As he said last week “People don’t typically go out and see how quickly they can run 100m for recreation. We have to figure out how a unique sport like athletics, with multiple different disciplines and not typically recreational activities can become relevant.”
He may well have answered his own question. So many sports have a uniqueness about them. It is time to focus on those as they are ultimately their strengths. How many people have actually attempted throwing a hammer or the pole vault? How many of us have run 5000m but never in a time close to 12 and a half minutes? These are the things that make us watch sport, being able to marvel at those who are the best, and can do the things that we cannot do or have never even attempted to do.
The contest, the race, the event is and always will be the key to unlocking support in any sport. Let us hope Athletics, and other sports listen to Michael Johnson and all rediscover their relevance in our lives. The relevance of the game, the race, the contest being more important than the athlete.
