BadImplication
Newbie
- Joined
- Mar 4, 2013
- Messages
- 4
Bowling is televised. They wouldn't find sponsors if nobody was watching.
Discover new ways to elevate your game with the updated DGCourseReview app!
It's entirely free and enhanced with features shaped by user feedback to ensure your best experience on the course. (App Store or Google Play)
Maybe, but without the big payday you'd see a lot fewer kids "going to college", never going to class and expecting to get rich without any kind of education. People would still play the sport, but I think less would have it be the only focus of their lives.
Probably the best analogy I have heard yet.......
Agreed, wouldn't want anything like that to happen to disc golf. Hopefully examples like that can be used as precautionary tales before anyone jumps in bed too quickly with certain sponsors.I will even give an example. I am a big rally fan. Off road racing through the woods and deserts. I have been into it for years, watching, volunteering, attending races. Several years ago, the X Gamers got into it. Travis Pastrana, Dave Mirra......brought huge money with them. Big sponsored teams, SOBE, Red Bull, Monster..... Big teams, great cars, huge mobile homes and dominated the American rally scene. By the way side fell the scads of mom and pop teams that proliferated the sport for years, and many of the small and local sponsorship dollars. Not necessarily a bad thing, just a cost. Not too long after the X Games boys moved on with their big dollars and grew the sport into indoor RallyCross. A hybrid indoor stadium truck racing/rally car race, with a jump, of course. It left the sport decimated for years. The small time sponsorship, the independent race teams were gone. As the sport rebuilds itself in this country,(never anything but a niche sport anyway), I am guessing most involved were not happy with the sport "growth".
Bowling is televised. They wouldn't find sponsors if nobody was watching.
Credit to ThreePutt on that one, he's posted similar thoughts a few times and I thought that was a really good comparison for us.
pretty sure that was me as I've posted it repeatedly in any number of places... and i got it originally from Chuck.
Does it really matter if it's not "mainstream"?
Does it really matter if we never "see the big bucks?"
Aside from a couple dozen sincerely touring pros, who make this a lifestyle choice (knowing what they are getting into and striving to make it a higher paying career choice), how does this directly effect the game as it is today?
We have great disc manufacturers today, more than there ever has been.
We have wonderful courses being put in, bigger and badder then ever before.
Some could say we've lost the "soul" of disc sports, by only focusing solely on disc GOLF. Some could even argue that the soul of disc golf has been killed by high speed drivers.
What's not to love right now? In the golden age of DG, I think we really are. Instead of wishing what we would become, enjoy what we are now.
I've been to a major ball golf event. The Buick Open. There are literally hundreds of cameras, cranes, scaffold platforms, media trucks, etc. involved. Plus a hundred or so officials, spotters, crowd control, security, etc.It's been televised for decades. The biggest reason is that it's cheap to film. Two cameras (one pointed down the alley at the pins, one pointed at the players) are all you really need, and they can be fixed in place for the duration.
The biggest obstacle disc golf faces in terms of being televised is the cost of execution. Properly covering a disc golf tournament (I mean covering everyone, not just the top one or two cards) requires far more cameras than bowling or poker does. And the cameras need to be mobile as well. You can't do a whole lot with fixed cameras, especially considering many courses wind through the woods creating a lot of obstructions between a camera and its intended subject.
So right there, the bar for covering our game is a lot higher than it is for televising/broadcasting poker or bowling or even baseball/football/etc. Ever seen early television broadcasts of baseball games? Usually one camera, behind home plate, with minimal movement or zooming. That's about where we are in the timeline of broadcasting disc golf. One camera following a single group as it plays the course. No cutting away to other holes/groups, and in the case of live broadcasts, no editing out of the down time between throws. It's rudimentary and reflective of the budget involved.
Maybe someday we evolve past that point and get closer to full course coverage we see in ball golf, but it's still a long long way off if it ever comes.
1. Professionalism, especially at the professional level. (This is the first step to get bigger sponsors in the game. Large companies want the face of their company to represent them well. )
I disagree with this on some levels. You are right that sponsors want professional and well behaved players to represent their brand. On the other hand, watching a well behaved, professional athlete doesn't attract as many viewers compared to more controversial athletes. In the NFL, why does Johnny Manziel get so much more attention than Blake Bortles? Why was tennis so popular in the 80's? Why was heavyweight boxing so popular in the 80's and 90's? The actual sport itself isn't enough to attract interest... it's the personalities and the story lines that generate higher ratings and viewers. Finding a unique way to showcase the personalities in our sport is the best way to do this.
Parents are also the ultimate spectators to accelerate the monetization of viewership.Popular sports are popular with children. Disc golf requires a large amount of space. Anyone who lacks easy access to a park or at least a large vacant area is not going to be able to do more than putt. I did not play football, baseball or basketball because of my parents. I played those sports because the other children in my neighborhood wanted to play those sports. Unless a parent took us to the course most of us found it in high school at the earliest. Many of us are adults when we first encounter the sport. Explain to me how we make the sport popular with children and you will have found the answer.