Ken Climo leaving Innova

[Fistymcbuttpuncher]

I'm with biscoe. I watch some to see a new course. I find little entertainment value in much professional disc golf.

I think its due to pros and manufacturers want different things from a social media presence.
Players want/need to build a personal brand
Companies want/need disc sales now.

Players that build a brand become The Guy-that happens to throw [Insert Manufacturer Here], think eagle/simon/mcbeth. They can force manufacturers to negotiate. Those guys are established brands with weight behind them and can't be taken advantage of like a decent player but with no brand power can, think robinsons/heimburg(you know its true).

Its in the company's best short term interest to have a player able to sell lots of discs, but deny them the ability to build a brand. The last thing they want is for an employee to have leverage.

So DG social media is in a kind of a 'on your own' state for players. The closest we came to a company breaking the mold was Lat64's Jonathan series, but last I saw it ended abruptly. I remember the 'buy fuse' spread far and wide, so much so that I found one of them in my corner of bumfuck nowhere. Wonder if he started to leverage his popularity and they pulled the plug? Again I'm not very up to date.

A company like Innova doesn't want to put $$$,$$$ into building a media personality that will just leverage any popularity against them(in terms of wages/etc). Like dating and financially supporting someone through med school only for them to dump you once they finish residency.

 

[@CD-]

Manufacturers need to keep producing - idle machinery is not good
Brands need to advertise to new and existing players to sell more discs/merchandise
Sponsored players/personalities need to earn a living to make it worthwhile to tour & present the DG brands to potential buyers & markets

DG sponsorships are just an advertising & sales contract. There are different ways of fulfilling that - I'm interested to see how Climo's new sponsor promotes and integrates him into their branding/lineup. Curious how long the partnership contract will be as well.

 

[sidewinder22]

Is Stokely a bigger name than Climo?

 

[Cgkdisc]

Is Stokely a bigger name than Climo?

40% bigger...

 

[HyooMac]

Is Stokely a bigger name than Climo?

Historically - no.
Currently - yes.

Stokely has more currency - more impact with currently active players, especially those interested in learning technique by video or in person.

I'm not comparing them as players, or guys, or their place in the game's history. But currently, I'd say Stokely is more relevant to more active players.

 

[Fistymcbuttpuncher]

They're from the same era, but stokely had to keep grinding through the years. He comes off as a bit of a conman to me, but I'm sure that's because I'm not super familiar with him. But he has that Billy Mays energy of whatever he's selling currently, is just the most amazing thing in the world and you'd be doing yourself a disservice to pass up this once in a lifetime opportunity... But again, that's on me, mostly.

KC though, unless you were involved OVER a decade ago, you only know his name as a type of plastic or Teebird. His brand building will have to be completely top-down, being introduced to today's audience by someone they already know. And I'm not sure they can sell that goofy lookin country boy as 'THE GOAT' to the youngins that won't even get to see him play well.

(this is all ONLY about their current name recognition)

 

[Sheep]

What killed my interest in players' youtubes is when they started splitting rounds between channels. I aint gonna play 'find the video' to see the other half.

I understand why they did/do it, I just hate it.

I get the some at your channel, some at mine.
Kind of one of those "lets promote together, and get them to your channel too for subs."

But... 90% of those people are not gonna sub.

I just really feel like something is missing in the standard disc golf video format.

I think Simon is doing something a bit different, can't tell what. I can watch Simons video's, but. not really as much anyone elses. I think its simons personality that really helps the video shine though.

 

[Fistymcbuttpuncher]

I stopped watching simon mostly, but when I did, it was more like "Simon goes to play a round and brings you along". As opposed to "Hey whats up youtube, its ya boi BigDiscEnergy69420 here with you for another round! Lets get discin! [Proceeds to play a frantic round with muffled joking mixed in]".
Its more like checking in on the world of simon(and whatever new disc hes hawking every 10seconds, but w/e), ya know? Its more of a vibe.

I wonder if someone could pull off DG content with little DG. Like a group of 3 or 4 playing and just bantering as they play. Like the jomez practice round, but with fun personalities(not held back by corpospeak) and less obsession on getting the perfect angle to film a boring throw(jump cuts disrupt banter flow). I'm sure its been tried, but as with anything subjective, you can try it a hundred times and get a hundred different results. Not sure there is enough money or audience for those kinds of things in the current DG world, but its what I want

 

[Sheep]

Manufacturers need to keep producing - idle machinery is not good
Brands need to advertise to new and existing players to sell more discs/merchandise
Sponsored players/personalities need to earn a living to make it worthwhile to tour & present the DG brands to potential buyers & markets

DG sponsorships are just an advertising & sales contract. There are different ways of fulfilling that - I'm interested to see how Climo's new sponsor promotes and integrates him into their branding/lineup. Curious how long the partnership contract will be as well.

I'm going to try and express this as best from experience working in this marketplace on social media. While ya'll know me for disc golf here and my crappy rant video's on youtube. That's my personal stuff, not my professional stuff.

Disc golf works on a model that other MFG's tried to push really hard years and years ago. Most of your online social media promoters now dont play that game now. You pay for content and advertisement. No more of this free goods for a video bullshit.

Now, I'm going to use some slurs and what not, I mean them halfheartedly.

Disc golf is full of a bunch of wannabe neck beard, moms basement dwelling youtubers and social media promoters who are so poor and so full of cum that they will take any free thing from a MFG and post a video.

Disc golf MFG's know this. They will damn near send anyone 2 or 3 free discs, (except me for some reason) to advertise for them and promote their product for free.

So, if a MFG sends you 2 discs, that's like 10 dollars on them to do that. Not even a drop in the bucket.
They dont care how good your product is on the video, just that the video reaches people even if its 600 folks or 6,000 folks.

This is absolute bullshit, and until content creators start playing hardball with MFG's on this, especially the good reviewers out there. This is going to continue to be the model. But as long as these wannabe youtubers keep posting free advertisements for them and free promotions for them, they are going to keep maintaining that model and it wont get better.

Then the rebuttal will usually be when I talk about this. "well, get out there and make good review content and show them how its done so MFG's will pay you to do good proper reviews."
No they wont. They have 400 other free advertisers out there ,why are they going to drop 3k to me to do a full production review on a disc for them or a disc line, product this or that. They are not going to.

This is what happened in the other space I work in. MFG's thought a free product would be "good enough" to pay for the hours of video and editing, testing and more. They all banded together and said "no, you will pay us for our time."
And that's the model now. There are a lot of times we do video's for 10k plus the product. Sometimes its 3k plus the product. It depends on what it is. But the guy I work for has to pay me for starters, and he has to pay for his time and management of the video over the lifespan of his channel.

Thats part of the things you dont think about. You make a video on your channel, its yours to manage the rest of your life. That video that was safe 4 years ago might suddenly get your channel copyright striked and taken down. And you made how much on it? 2 free discs and 5+ hours of your time and lost everything.

I'd absolutely LOVE to rip some good proper reviews on discs and do disc reviews the way I think they should be done vs someone just throwing a disc in a field going "Yep, this is what it does."
And do you blame them for not doing more than that? They got 2 free discs, or maybe 1 free disc. And they gotta make a video to keep that going.
Yeah, you might see how the disc flies, but not how its used. What you can push it to do and how it performs.

But why would I spend 5 to 6 hours filming that kind of content, then 2 or 3 hours of editing for 2 free discs?
I wouldn't.
And youtube isn't going to give me much money. Especially a channel like mine who lost their monetization when they changed the rules, then they never paid me my ad revenue from older video's I had.

Can you make money on youtube? Yes, but until you get into the 10k range on subs, you're getting chump change. Guys like OT and robby, GK and a few otehrs get some good payouts from youtube. Live off of payouts? I dont know.

And I don't mean my above words to be offensive to some people out there, but the low quality review video's from people who just. well. Suck at disc golf. Yeah. Bothers me. And they are the ones who ruin it for people who can truly do some powerful reviews on products and discs, because with them making all the free advertisement out there for the companies, the current model will never change.

The only way ANY of that could change is if some current influencer rolls into disc golf and starts making DG video's. Then MFG's suddenly will try and get ahold of you for paid content. But you gotta be bringing like 600k+ subs to the table before they thinking about that.
Like Discraft, who called my boss and wanted him to do some content. We dont' do disc golf content. He just occasionally posts disc golf stuff on his instagram.

He comes off as a bit of a conman to me,

He is.
Historically all his projects are pump and dump projects. Get the cash, move on, forget about it.
He's also an ego maniac, so that really lends in to his weird personality. And in person, I've found him difficult to talk to. Bit of a chip on his shoulder sorta thing.

I'm not saying this to dump on him like "omg scott is a bad guy."
Cause I think his heart is generally in the right place. But with what I know, I'd never trust the guy business wise. He wants to have a brand and a legacy, and that's what he's working on. But.. as I stated about one of his projects I'm very familiar with, he put in 0 promotional effort and 0 effort to maintain it.

 

[Sheep]

I wonder if someone could pull off DG content with little DG. Like a group of 3 or 4 playing and just bantering as they play. Like the jomez practice round, but with fun personalities(not held back by corpospeak) and less obsession on getting the perfect angle to film a boring throw(jump cuts disrupt banter flow). I'm sure its been tried, but as with anything subjective, you can try it a hundred times and get a hundred different results. Not sure there is enough money or audience for those kinds of things in the current DG world, but its what I want

There are some great smaller content creators out there that "can" do this.
And I've tried to hook up with them to collab and just make some fun video's.

They just are simply not interested.
If I was sitting on 10-30k subs, I know they would be lining up to do content. But because I'm a small channel and dont promote my stuff, or hardly make content. (I make content for me, for fun and to have a good time) .. I got like no subs. Heck, I know at least 5 of my subs are dead. Because I knew them personally.

The creator space is just really selfish feeling.
Then the bigger creators act like "oh yeah, i talk to people all the time, we always do stuff all the time."

Yeah, you do stuff with other "large" creators. You dont give 2 shits about anyone else. Why? Because its a business, you're trying to grow your brand, not grow disc golf and other creators.

God, I sound so bitchy.
But I'm trying to be honest about the creator space and what I see and how I can explain it with my experience and examples of other bigger youtubers than any of the disc golf youtubers.
I'm filming with guys with 3mill subs. Discgolfers out there just looking for table scraps and not trying to build a community of creators like all these guys did. All these guys I worked with banded together and built a community of content creators to uplift each other and all grow.
And because of that, they are all friends 15 years later still.

And when I was doing other content with my channel back 15 years ago, I ended up making friends like that too. People I talk to almost daily still 15 years later. They are still making content in that field. I'm not. I'm doing dumb yell at clouds video's cause it makes me laugh in side when people get upset about me saying my opinion in harsh tones.

 

[Fistymcbuttpuncher]

Sidenote: I'm pickin up everything you're laying down, but this "it makes me laugh in side when people get upset about me saying my opinion in harsh tones." gives me a flash of apprehension, gets real close to a 'trolling for trolling's sake' ick(as the kids say).
____

Content creation(not DG specific) is just a bucket of crabs. Everyone trying to crawl up everyone else and no gets anywhere. Add in algos putting weight behind random vids, even if you have a perfect product that WILL resonate, there's no guarantee anyone will ever see it. Or you could film a dead body and be a millionaire. Who knows.

 

[biscoe]

I wonder if someone could pull off DG content with little DG. Like a group of 3 or 4 playing and just bantering as they play. Like the jomez practice round, but with fun personalities(not held back by corpospeak) and less obsession on getting the perfect angle to film a boring throw(jump cuts disrupt banter flow). I'm sure its been tried, but as with anything subjective, you can try it a hundred times and get a hundred different results. Not sure there is enough money or audience for those kinds of things in the current DG world, but its what I want

Alden Harris channel does this- far and away the most entertaining semi-dg content out there imo. It's primarily just Alden and his boys (Gannon, the Robinsons, Babcock) acting goofy and enjoying their lives- only 35k subs though and seems to me that they put stuff out more regularly in 23 than 24.

 

[Fistymcbuttpuncher]

I won't give my eyeballs to a jesusfreak.

 

[Sewer bill]

600k subs is irrelevant if the engagement is low. That's front end information. If you want to actually pump a product engagement is the winner. There's people doing weekly streams on iphones shilling shitcoins and pennystocks with 10k subs who can pull millions of dollars from their base to throw at products and pump and dumps. If you asked any of the big disc golf creators to ask their base for a dollar each I bet real money none of them could raise 5k in a month.

The crux is, disc golf is at face value cringe and dorky to regular people.

Making it look less stupid to a broader audience should be the goal of anyone making disc golf content if they don't already have an entrenched viewer base.

This means shaking out the 250 foot throwing ma3 bearded tatted up 40 year olds who show up when you start getting video algorithm hits for disc golf. Same goes for the whatever you call the off-season jomez content, that stuff is legitimately unappealing to anyone outside disc golf.

On the topic of Climo, I think some strategic drip fed highlight reel footage can easily propel him back to name recognition with newer players and he's already got the sub100k pdga members on lock on first name basis.

All just my opinion nothing based on facts.

 

[itlnstln]

I won't give my eyeballs to a jesusfreak.

This becoming most of the touring field at this point. Such a shift from when I started playing

 

[biscoe]

They aren't proselytizing through the videos so I don't really care.

 

[itlnstln]

They aren't proselytizing through the videos so I don't really care.

It's coming: Eagles Wings Disc Golf

 

[elmexdela]

There are some great smaller content creators out there that "can" do this.
And I've tried to hook up with them to collab and just make some fun video's.

They just are simply not interested.
If I was sitting on 10-30k subs, I know they would be lining up to do content. But because I'm a small channel and dont promote my stuff, or hardly make content. (I make content for me, for fun and to have a good time) .. I got like no subs. Heck, I know at least 5 of my subs are dead. Because I knew them personally.

The creator space is just really selfish feeling.
Then the bigger creators act like "oh yeah, i talk to people all the time, we always do stuff all the time."

Yeah, you do stuff with other "large" creators. You dont give 2 shits about anyone else. Why? Because its a business, you're trying to grow your brand, not grow disc golf and other creators.

God, I sound so bitchy.
But I'm trying to be honest about the creator space and what I see and how I can explain it with my experience and examples of other bigger youtubers than any of the disc golf youtubers.
I'm filming with guys with 3mill subs. Discgolfers out there just looking for table scraps and not trying to build a community of creators like all these guys did. All these guys I worked with banded together and built a community of content creators to uplift each other and all grow.
And because of that, they are all friends 15 years later still.

And when I was doing other content with my channel back 15 years ago, I ended up making friends like that too. People I talk to almost daily still 15 years later. They are still making content in that field. I'm not. I'm doing dumb yell at clouds video's cause it makes me laugh in side when people get upset about me saying my opinion in harsh tones.

this is the first string of comments i have read of yours i usually ignore them cuz its too long but pretty quality ramblings thanks for sharing (i might even read moar of yours in the future)

i dont have anything to add other than what you said is a lot of my suspicions and cool to hear from someone who has actually done yt chit and also seen the dg side of it

 

[TheOtherBill]

They need to expand the buying audience. They've already covered the stoners and the old Ultimate guys, this seems like a no-brainer, tons of church courses nowadays.

 

[discerdoo]

this is the first string of comments i have read of yours i usually ignore them cuz its too long but pretty quality ramblings thanks for sharing (i might even read moar of yours in the future)

i dont have anything to add other than what you said is a lot of my suspicions and cool to hear from someone who has actually done yt chit and also seen the dg side of it

Careful elmex, reading Sheep will rot your brain.