lyleoross
* Ace Member *
This annoys me. What a great opportunity to recruit, or if nothing else, prove your knowledge base. I love talking with non-disc golfers about the sport.
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Talent Out Pacing The Money?
- Thread starter DiscFifty
- Start date
This annoys me. What a great opportunity to recruit, or if nothing else, prove your knowledge base. I love talking with non-disc golfers about the sport.
brutalbrutus
* Ace Member *
Well, to be fair, it isn't much worse than what happens here sometimes but those are usually noob players/members rather than non-players...
Disc golf highlights aren't on ESPN. Let's not mistake their occasional showing a single throw (usually an ace) as "highlights" in the sense of tournament results or anything disc golf being news to the mainstream. Getting a 5-10 second clip on SC Top 10 is essentially a viral video. I'd discount that as much as I discount the 1.2M views on Philo's albatross in measuring outside interest in the game. It's fleeting attention at best.
As for the non-players popping into the chats on live broadcasts, I think that's a bit different than random non-players finding a Jomez or CCDG post-produced tournament video. If you go to youtube.com/live you get a page that is a collection of active live streams. No doubt Smashboxx or DGPT pops up there in some form or fashion when they're streaming. The threshold to be featured there seems a lot lower than on the home page. I see streams with as few as 88 viewers on that page, whereas the trending videos on the home page seem to have view counts in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions (on videos that are often only a day or two old). Tougher for a Jomez or CCDG to crack that to raise their casual viewership.
For the younger generations, going to youtube.com/live (or the live tab on the app) is the equivalent of older generations turning on the TV and flipping through the channels. They have no particular show in mind, they're just seeing what catches their eye and entertains them. Maybe they're stopping to watch for a few minutes, but odds are good it's not going to be life altering to them. I'd wager it's maybe one in ten who don't dismiss it as a odd curiosity and try to seek out more info about what they're seeing (whether it's searching for more videos or actually going out and trying to play). And maybe there's 10 such viewers during an entire 3-4 hour broadcast. I'm not sure it's a big enough thing yet to really make a concerted effort to court. Perhaps when the live viewership gets into the tens of thousands rather than just a couple thousand, the occasional stragglers will be something to get excited about.
lyleoross
* Ace Member *
I understand they aren't doing a thirty-minute synopsis of rounds, but for sure it is exposure and an opportunity. JC, ya sound like a glass half full kind of guy. 
I view those visitors and exposures, viral video or not, as an opportunity. We are myopic. Since we play, we tend to look at the grime and downside of our sport.
It's too boring, it will never succeed, it's just great for me to have fun but no one will ever watch it.
These are things I wrote ten short years ago. Today, I am amazed at how wrong I was. Frankly, I find watching disc golf on YouTub more exciting than baseball, something I still watch. Every throw rings the same as a beautifully struck ball, to me. It has the same grace and flight. The only real issue I see is the competition for eyes based on, as you wrote, the youth finding all things on YouTub entertaining. My sons watch guys yacking it up while playing very bad rounds of very bad video games. Talk about your boring.
I think I will patiently watch and see how wrong we are about how things are going to be in five or ten years. After that, I will be senile and old and will believe that disc golf is the most watched sport in the world, and it won't matter anyway.
I view those visitors and exposures, viral video or not, as an opportunity. We are myopic. Since we play, we tend to look at the grime and downside of our sport.
It's too boring, it will never succeed, it's just great for me to have fun but no one will ever watch it.
These are things I wrote ten short years ago. Today, I am amazed at how wrong I was. Frankly, I find watching disc golf on YouTub more exciting than baseball, something I still watch. Every throw rings the same as a beautifully struck ball, to me. It has the same grace and flight. The only real issue I see is the competition for eyes based on, as you wrote, the youth finding all things on YouTub entertaining. My sons watch guys yacking it up while playing very bad rounds of very bad video games. Talk about your boring.
I think I will patiently watch and see how wrong we are about how things are going to be in five or ten years. After that, I will be senile and old and will believe that disc golf is the most watched sport in the world, and it won't matter anyway.
lyleoross
* Ace Member *
Quickly, I want to get Jamie's back for a moment. His notion that Spin was the first to do it right, and set a tone, is correct. Go back and look at the start of Jomez and McFly. Spin's graphics and video at the time, were as good as anything today. Jomez, CCDG and McFly showed promise, but Spin set the tone.
Link to video? Thx.
lyleoross
* Ace Member *
Oh god, I'm too old to do links. Give me a second, ya damn kid.
lyleoross
* Ace Member *
Spin, 2015
Jomez, 2015
Please understand, I'm talking imagery and overall smoothness. For what Jomez was back then, it was darned good.
Here's a Spin short from 2013
If someone challenged me and asked, really, where are the breaks and who got good first, well, they'd probably catch me out, my recollection was just of seeing those early on graphics from Spin, and then see in CCDG and Jomez later.
It isn't hard to find, I remembered Jomez from TS in 2014, I think it was. It was good, they had the hole graphics (before the fly-throughs) it was good, but not nearly as dynamic as what Spin was doing.
Jomez, 2015
Please understand, I'm talking imagery and overall smoothness. For what Jomez was back then, it was darned good.
Here's a Spin short from 2013
If someone challenged me and asked, really, where are the breaks and who got good first, well, they'd probably catch me out, my recollection was just of seeing those early on graphics from Spin, and then see in CCDG and Jomez later.
It isn't hard to find, I remembered Jomez from TS in 2014, I think it was. It was good, they had the hole graphics (before the fly-throughs) it was good, but not nearly as dynamic as what Spin was doing.
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lyleoross
* Ace Member *
BTW - it becomes clear as you go through these that Spin had a different mission. Those shorts weren't round coverage, but a lot of what they were doing has become parts of the, wait for it, intros, outros (see, I can be young and coolio) and inserts of the regular coverage.
lyleoross
* Ace Member *
As an aside, watching those made me feel guilty. Someone at Spin had great vision and marketing thought. I feel like we let them down. Sigh.
I understand they aren't doing a thirty-minute synopsis of rounds, but for sure it is exposure and an opportunity. JC, ya sound like a glass half full kind of guy.
Generally I am a half-full kind of guy, but I also like to be pragmatic. Exposure is good, but I think it amounts to teeny-tiny rather than big steps in the right direction. We need to get tournament coverage (live or post-produced) more exposure among players before we get overly concerned about attracting the attention of the non-player. We're growing that exposure at a good clip, so I think we'll get there eventually without forcing anything.
Don't confuse tournament coverage with all disc golf media. Also don't forget that I hired Jomez multiple times, as did Jussi. Our coverage was homogeneous more recently. Even though they shot it, it's still our production, you can't fairly parse it out.
Our quality is on par, they do a couple things better, we do a couple things better. You may like one style over another, but you can't then take and apply that as backing to a platform of "they outpaced you because they're superior", parsing out the objective vs subjective is a tall order.
Always happy to talk big picture. I just want to encourage dialogue at every turn, who knows who might see our talks and have a spark of brilliance and come up with the next big idea for the sport.
As to buying power...
It's actually a changing trend in marketing in general. A typical scenario with Baby Boomer parents is that the adults made the brand decisions - taught the kids what they liked (kinda like the jokes about "Red Vines vs. Twizzler families").
Nowadays with younger millennials and Gen Z, the kids are influencing the parents choices when it comes to brands, trends, etc.
So for this reason, the 30+ demographic may have the $, but they're not so much the driving force behind decisions as they were in the past. Couple this with the fact that traditional marketing simply doesn't work on millenials and Gen Z. Effective ad rates are at an all time low, so the tactics are evolving.
I feel like this is an appropriate time to wax poetic...
SpinTV was a catalyst in our sport. I'll always be proud of that. It will continue to exist I think, I'm not sure what the next evolution is for it, or if I'm involved (not being coy, I really don't know as of today). It'll likely be more focused on Europe, that's my guess. In fact it's my hope. If Jussi can execute the SpinTV vision but focus in on a region I think the depth of content could be amazing, and very enlightening to the all of us over here in the States. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Discmania and Innova are now producing content for their own channels instead of funneling it to SpinTV. It was kind of inevitable, unless we were to morph the channel into a standalone business, which I pitched actually, but it just didn't make as much sense to the owners of those brands. I can't really find fault in their logic.
I'm proud of what Jomez and CCDG have been able to do too. They're bearing the torch for tournament coverage. For a couple of years we stole the spotlight and they had to reconstruct their models a bit, and it worked. It's their time to be front and center and take in all the deserved kudos for their efforts. I think the sport benefits from the collaborative/competitive hybrid relationship. Of course we all want to be the marquee channel, but I think we're all very supportive at the same time and have that "if it's not me, I want it to be you" attitude.
Sidebar - I think that's why sometimes my comments about those guys get misconstrued as harsh criticism or "jealousy". It's not really like that.
All in all I guess this rambling is to say, don't feel bad. Look at what the last 5 years has brought all of us fans. Feel proud that you were there from the start of this movement, and we can both sit and sip a beer and complain that these 6-digit PDGA#'s don't know how good they have it!!
lyleoross
* Ace Member *
BTW - I was just casually viewing YouTub, no, I wasn't pre-looking for the Utah Open, anyway, they claim there is now 950,000 disc golf videos. I wonder how many cat videos there are? Anyway, I'm thinking we should do a pool for who gets the "1,000,000 video."
Don't confuse tournament coverage with all disc golf media. Also don't forget that I hired Jomez multiple times, as did Jussi. Our coverage was homogeneous more recently. Even though they shot it, it's still our production, you can't fairly parse it out.
Our quality is on par, they do a couple things better, we do a couple things better. You may like one style over another, but you can't then take and apply that as backing to a platform of "they outpaced you because they're superior", parsing out the objective vs subjective is a tall order.
Always happy to talk big picture. I just want to encourage dialogue at every turn, who knows who might see our talks and have a spark of brilliance and come up with the next big idea for the sport.
As to buying power...
It's actually a changing trend in marketing in general. A typical scenario with Baby Boomer parents is that the adults made the brand decisions - taught the kids what they liked (kinda like the jokes about "Red Vines vs. Twizzler families").
Nowadays with younger millennials and Gen Z, the kids are influencing the parents choices when it comes to brands, trends, etc.
So for this reason, the 30+ demographic may have the $, but they're not so much the driving force behind decisions as they were in the past. Couple this with the fact that traditional marketing simply doesn't work on millenials and Gen Z. Effective ad rates are at an all time low, so the tactics are evolving.
I feel like this is an appropriate time to wax poetic...
SpinTV was a catalyst in our sport. I'll always be proud of that. It will continue to exist I think, I'm not sure what the next evolution is for it, or if I'm involved (not being coy, I really don't know as of today). It'll likely be more focused on Europe, that's my guess. In fact it's my hope. If Jussi can execute the SpinTV vision but focus in on a region I think the depth of content could be amazing, and very enlightening to the all of us over here in the States. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Discmania and Innova are now producing content for their own channels instead of funneling it to SpinTV. It was kind of inevitable, unless we were to morph the channel into a standalone business, which I pitched actually, but it just didn't make as much sense to the owners of those brands. I can't really find fault in their logic.
I'm proud of what Jomez and CCDG have been able to do too. They're bearing the torch for tournament coverage. For a couple of years we stole the spotlight and they had to reconstruct their models a bit, and it worked. It's their time to be front and center and take in all the deserved kudos for their efforts. I think the sport benefits from the collaborative/competitive hybrid relationship. Of course we all want to be the marquee channel, but I think we're all very supportive at the same time and have that "if it's not me, I want it to be you" attitude.
Sidebar - I think that's why sometimes my comments about those guys get misconstrued as harsh criticism or "jealousy". It's not really like that.
All in all I guess this rambling is to say, don't feel bad. Look at what the last 5 years has brought all of us fans. Feel proud that you were there from the start of this movement, and we can both sit and sip a beer and complain that these 6-digit PDGA#'s don't know how good they have it!!
Just wanted to link to my comment on another thread:
https://www.dgcoursereview.com/forums/showthread.php?p=3321675#post3321675
Didn't read whole thread and sorry if this has been asked/answered, but how many pros actually make a living from being a professional disc golfer? It can't be many. I'm guessing most of their money comes from sponsorships, but it's gotta be a hard living if you're not a top 5 player.
Advertisers would rather have their message in front of 100 committed viewers that want to support sponsors that support their sport than 1,000 apathetic viewers that aren't paying attention to commercials at all. It's more about response rate than viewcount.
This is where NASCAR does so well -- people will support the folks who sponsor their favorite driver. I saw it happen in Atlanta, when Lowes started sponsoring a car. The car back then didn't do well at all (Brett Bodine at first, then Mike Skinner before they got Jimmy Johnson), but we had people coming into the store all the time saying that they stopped shopping at Home Depot (the hometown guys, with their corporate HQ downtown) because we started sponsoring a car. Home Depot mocked Lowes for sponsoring a car at first - then had their own car within a year or two. They saw the power of a group that was willing to support advertisers that support their sport. When we have a group that is willing to say "I'm going to drink Pepsi because they sponsored that tournament last week" we'll have something.
Bingo.
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2016
- Messages
- 1,812
Look at the Grip6 thread for an example.
Small disc golf specific businesses might see a bump in business by sponsoring Joe Pro or running ads.
Like to the tune of hundreds of people, or perhaps thousands of new customers, if they're lucky.
NASCAR is a different animal, in regards to large corporate sponsors.
That is an audience of hundreds of thousands, up to millions.
Corporate sponsors are not going to see that in disc golf.
I look at the "100" vs "1000" analogy as two different groups.
100 - Represents the current hardcore market. Advertising to them will probably not grow the sport. Lower risk, lower reward (due to only 100). Good group to advertise "disc golf specific items".
1000 - Represents a broader market reach. Advertising to them could grow the sport. Higher risk, higher reward (due to 1000). Good group to advertise a "belt buckle" or "shoes" or "generic sports related item".
Granted the sport's hardcore sponsors would want to focus on the "100", but the "sport itself" needs to also focus on those "1000" viewers. I wish the PDGA would somehow fund some of the better produced disc golf videos and pay to have them added to some of the more popular video channels for greater exposure.
