How does a sport become more popular?

[Paula]

I’m starting a new thread because I would really like to get some discussion going on this. If no one’s interested it can just fade into oblivion. I didn't see an archived thread on this subject.

How does a sport become more popular?

What about in the Olympics? Skating, skiing, swimming and gymnastics seem to be pretty popular. How did they become so watched? Did anyone watch Olympic bobsledding before “Cool Runnings” came out?

Can the popularity of a sport influence a movie? Will people flock to a movie just because it’s about baseball or football?

Can a movie influence the popularity of a sport?

[K O'N]

I’m starting a new thread because I would really like to get some discussion going on this. If no one’s interested it can just fade into oblivion. I didn't see an archived thread on this subject.

How does a sport become more popular?

To watch or to play?

What about in the Olympics? Skating, skiing, swimming and gymnastics seem to be pretty popular. How did they become so watched?

Popular to watch, then.

Did anyone watch Olympic bobsledding before “Cool Runnings” came out?

Sure. All the racing sports, sledding, skating, track, all of them are popular to watch during the Olympics but not otherwise.

The "chick sports", ice flouncing in the winter and pixie backflips in the summer, are unique to the Olympics, they capture the women who are watching a sporting event for the only time all year. Female non sports fans like ice flouncing and pixie backflips, as long as they only have to watch each of them every four years. We should ignore them for the purposes of planning fencing development, we're nothing like them.

Can the popularity of a sport influence a movie? Will people flock to a movie just because it’s about baseball or football?

I suppose it can help. If someone knows the rules you don't have to have a musical montage about how the game works before you show it. If someone played tennis in high school they might want to see a tennis movie.

Can a movie influence the popularity of a sport?

I have a friend who's a pretty serious biker who claims that Breaking Away changed American biking overnight. It went from a niche sport to a mainstream sport in about a year. Bike guys used to argue about how tight bike shorts made you look gay, how Americans wouldn't train, how our roads weren't set up for biking, and all that went away in a year because of one cheezy movie, according to him. He may be overstating it, but he knows a lot about biking.

If you want a movie to make fencing look good, first and foremost it has to be about fencing, not some stupid excuse to have people hack at each other with real swords at the end of the movie. Breaking Away was about a bike race, not about a bike racer who had to make a midnight ride down a mountain to deliver a kidney or something stupid like that. Rocky was about boxing and ended in a boxing match, not in a bar fight or with two guys with their fists wrapped in studded leather straps or something. So, movie about fencing? Climactic moment: fencing match.

And really, making fencing more popular in the US is not that hard a strategic problem. The answer is right in front of us. It's been tried, it works, it would work. The way to make fencing more popular is to get it in high schools around the country. That's it. Generate tons more people who fenced for a few years, make the sport miles more mainstream, support lots of clubs, in one fell swoop we'd be on a par with tennis at least, if not pretty soon with golf.

Last I heard the USFA is not actively working on this. It's too bad.

K O'N

[PeterGustafsson]

Hi!

I’m starting a new thread because I would really like to get some discussion going on this. If no one’s interested it can just fade into oblivion. I didn't see an archived thread on this subject.

How does a sport become more popular?

Many permutations of this topic have been done on f.net before. If you have not been able to find them in a simple search, then your searching technique needs improvement. Try searching for different names of sports that are not center-stage stuff.


Have a nice time!

Peter Gustafsson

[6-flick]

How does a sport become more popular?

What about in the Olympics?

The Colbert Bump.