At least the USFA is solvent...

[vigia]

Well, this is interesting. Women's professional soccer is bankrupt. $100M of investment and a highly publicized world championship to their name, and they still couldn't pull it off. Too damn sad. So where does that leave our pundits who claim that all we need is some Olympic gold to float the future of fencing? Seems like the formula for success is a bit more complex than just piles of cash and gold medals...

http://www.boston.com/news/daily/15/womens_soccer.htm

[wari]

Originally posted by vigia
Well, this is interesting. Women's professional soccer is bankrupt. $100M of investment and a highly publicized world championship to their name, and they still couldn't pull it off. Too damn sad. So where does that leave our pundits who claim that all we need is some Olympic gold to float the future of fencing? Seems like the formula for success is a bit more complex than just piles of cash and gold medals...

http://www.boston.com/news/daily/15/womens_soccer.htm

I agree with you. In my opinion the best way to promote the sport is to showcase it and include more business minded people in the organization.

[edew]

Look, soccer isn't going to be big in the US no matter what. The soccer folks thought they were going to be the next NFL. That's not going to be. It has to (and always will) be the case of growing the sport from the ground up. Women's soccer is like the WNBA: all flash and marketing. Let it grow from the bottom up and see where in the grand scheme of things it lands. Then promote it from there and sustain it.

Fencing should be promoted similarly: let it grow from the bottom up and see where it lands. Then promote it at that level and sustain it.

[fence1848]

Originally posted by edew
Fencing should be promoted similarly: let it grow from the bottom up and see where it lands. Then promote it at that level and sustain it.

Okay, not to be picky, but that sounds like a contradiction. "Let it grow" gives me a visual of a plant growing upward. "See where it lands" sounds like something falling towards the ground.

As for the idea of promoting fencing: the fact that the Women's soccer league went under is discouraging, but hardly a surprise. Since the USA hosted the 1994 men's World Cup, soccer has actually stood a chance of succeeding as a professional sport in the USA. The US women's team's success in the 1999 women's World Cup encouraged the formation of the professional women's soccer league. The problem was, it was premature, not for women's soccer, but more for soccer in general to have 2 entire leagues to deal with. Men's soccer wasn't selling out the stadium, yet, and women's soccer would be pulling much of the same audience.

Anyhow, back to fencing - it has to start with small snippets of TV time. Also, announcers have to be taught how to view and announce fencing. I've seen several british tapes, and the commentators know what they're talking about and also how to show a slow-motion replay. With some high-level fencing, slow motion replays do a good job of show-casing just how impressive what they're doing is. It works well with football.

Many people (including the FIE) claim that fencing is too complicated to understand. Non-sense, I say. The most popular spectator sport in this country is football, and I don't understand half of the rules in it, but it's still great to watch.

I think the problems fencing faces with publicity have to do with a complete lack of TV time (i.e. Titan Games) and the fact that when it is covered, the person covering it doesn't really know how to analyze the sport. I think it will take an inflitration of mainstream media, even if only in small bits, to teach the media how to cover it.

[JEC]

Originally posted by fence1848
... the fact that when it is covered, the person covering it doesn't really know how to analyze the sport. I think it will take an inflitration of mainstream media, even if only in small bits, to teach the media how to cover it.

I agree. I travel quite a bit and often (3/4) get upgraded. In the last few weeks, I open my laptop (Toshiba 5205-S705 with bright screen) and watch the 1.5 hr DVD. Invariably, I get one or two people interested, and some have email me to tell me they are checking out the sport. I sat next to a media executive with whom I had a very interesting discussion about this issue. Part of it is that producers and directors sit in a room and brainstorm about what their perception is of what the public wants and will understand. Once they come up with a plan this is presented back to management, and to for the first time to the "expert" analysts as to how to cover it. For most sports, there is already a protocol but for fencing, with rules and lights changing sides, etc, they just have a blank look in their face.

[edew]

Isn't that more an indictment of the executives being out of touch or out of step than fencing being out of touch with the hypothetical audience?

These executives don't know fencing because they haven't bothered to look deep into it. They missed out on all sorts of from-the-ground-up things.

The really sad thing is that some of these executives became executives because they were deeply immersed in some product or activity and grew that into what made them famous. Now, they forgot that what made them famous was that they knew the product inside-out, not because of great management.

[JEC]

I agree EDEW, but may I suggest to you that most of them (Sports media) have football, baseball, basketball, golf or tennis in their past rather than fencing.

[Walkabout_Jim]

I think the problem is the media prefers to think of/show fencing as this arcane sport. They use images of 19th century rich people bending their foil over their head and saying "En Garde". Or worse like some bad Robin Hood skit!
Educating these people to what REAL Fencing is, is the first step. Then, perhaps getting the USFA to promote the sport with a commercial during a large sporting event (superbowl, NBA Playoffs, Stanley Cup). Show how exciting the sport really is...& then perhaps we can get some coverage in the media.

[Rolls]

I agree that the real problem is ignorance. How many people do you know that know nothing about fencing at all. I know some of my close freinds and family members wouldn't be able to tell a foil from an epee, and I have been fencing for years.

The solution is easy. Just get people to fence. How many people like to watch basketball because they grew up playing it in the backyard.

I think the USFA or someone is doing a good job of this. When I went to the Summer Nationals in Austin, they announced that it was a new attendace record for Div III men's foil. I think that's a sign that there is an increased interest in fencing in the US.

Rolls.
www.badsfencing.com

[vigia]

Originally posted by edew
Fencing should be promoted similarly: let it grow from the bottom up and see where it lands. Then promote it at that level and sustain it.

Which was my point.

[R. Exnicios]

Okay:

I always resist these threads because I tend to rant & rave.

I have two examples.

1- We got permission to play the world championship tapes on the big screen at one of the local sports bars. The bar was filled with the normal crowd of sports fans and such. After a few minutes people were watching, cheering and very engrossed by the whole thing. And this was with no sound!

2- I worked for the Olympics in Atlanta and had access to the direct feed of all events. I would watch the raw footage of the fencing in the conference room in my office and people who had never fenced or seen it before would come in and watch.

So I'll say it again. It's not the sport. It's the PR (or lack there of) and the lack of any editing and color analysis.

We need more fencers and every division, section and the national office needs to send out press releases every time anything happens. Hit the media early and often.

Okay I'm done.

Cheers

R

[fence1848]

You know, it's a weird coincidence, but a few weeks ago I was looking up some old friends of mine from high school, and I came across the name of someone I've known since I was a kid. She's now the director of marketing for Falconhead Capital, which seems to be a corporate investment firm that specializes in sports, media, and leisure activities. I'm tempted to drop her an e-mail to get her input on this.

[fence1848]

Originally posted by R. Exnicios


So I'll say it again. It's not the sport. It's the PR (or lack there of) and the lack of any editing and color analysis.

You know, this is one of the first threads i've seen in a while that was easily able to agree on anything. From the looks of things, everyone here agrees that it's the total lack of coverage and ability to commentate, not the nature of the sport, that is inhibiting fencing in the media.

Reminds me of when a local paper sent an intern to do a story on our fencing club, and they included a picture of our armorer rewiring a blade. The caption in the article said he was "sharpening blades". For a while, we were just laughing, but then we got upset because it went completely against the image we were trying to portray of the club.

[MyrddinsPrecint]

from listening to NPR this morning, i got the sense (and i could be completely off base about this) that WUSA needed more money because sponsers weren't giving them enough, and that the figured that if they "folded" now, right before the world cup, it would be more likly to get more press, and be more likely to get more sponsers to revive the league.

to me, it seems more like a PR move than anything else....

[JEC]

Originally posted by MyrddinsPrecint
... to me, it seems more like a PR move than anything else....

It might be but is hard to come up with 100 million dollars. The truth is that they went high profile and as the NPR program indicated, it will take another generation of women who have expectation of watching women sports for it to happen.

[Inquartata]

Frankly, I think it IS the sport.

What goes on at my salle is instructive. We have a glassed-front room, and people who wander by outside will stop and watch for about 30 seconds...then they get bored and walk away. The ones we get inside will watch for a little longer, perhaps out of a sense of obligation ( seldom is it real interest ), and then despite our efforts to explain, coax, and edify they too walk out and away. Maybe one in a hundred of these will actually put on a mask and get a quickie lesson in the position, parries and so on. And most of those don't keep coming back for long.

PR and "spectator appeal" has nothing to do with what is happening in our little microcosm. Colored uniforms and plexiglas masks would help not at all. We have to face the fact that fencing simply appeals to a certain sort of person and not to others...and the sort to whom it does appeal is a very small minority. We can increase the portion of that minority we attract, maybe. But fencing is never going to be golf or tennis, much less basketball. It isn't even going to be biking. And pouring lots and lots of money down a rathole is not going to alter that reality.

[veeco]

Claiming defeat without putting a fight, is what you are doing, Inquartata. Sorry to sound Yoda-like, but if that was the case, how can you explain then that in the 1900s fencing was much more popular than it was then? Most sports newspapers carried a section on fencing relating bouts that had taken place the night before at the local club, where someone famous had come to practice?

That there was professional fencing bouts being staged in big halls where thousands would pay a hefty amount just to get in and see the action (and show that they were there, too!)

I think there is a potential for fencing as a mediatized sport. Maybe not as big a potential as tennis, football (which is shown on TV pretty much only in the US), and yes, even soccer! The fact that a women's soccer league did not work out in the US doesn't mean it couldn't work somewhere else, or at another time.

Now as far as the means to achieve that goal, that is a different thing. Clearly colored uniforms and painted masks are not going to change everything, they are one small piece of the puzzle. Marketing is another, perhaps even bigger one. Hell there is probably a lot of other pieces that I did not think of, or that anyone has thought of for that matter.

But I do think it is possible.

[Inquartata]

Originally posted by veeco
Claiming defeat without putting a fight, is what you are doing, Inquartata. Sorry to sound Yoda-like, but if that was the case, how can you explain then that in the 1900s fencing was much more popular than it was then?

Lots of reasons. Such as the lack of competing entertainments: no TV, no movies, no CD players, no internet. Someone put on a show, ANY show, and you went. Because it was something different. You know, the way hangings drew huge crowds, too.

Proximity to the "wellspring", for another. That is, there were still occasional duels. And you have only to drive past an accident scene to notice how people are drawn to the possibility of seeing blood.

And probably other reasons I can't think of off the top of my head. But the point is, it seems unlikely that it's because people were more avidly interested in the sport itself back then...

[veeco]

These are good reasons, but they are not good enough for me...

What tells you that the lack of competing entertainment drew large crowds for fencing events? I mean, sure there was no TV, no internet, no CD players... But there were lots of other things to entertain oneself, which did not involve watching fencing.

Theater plays, to which pretty much no one goes anymore
Operas, concerts, books to be read, radio shows, that no one listens to anymore, etc...

What did fencing have over all these things that it could not have over TV, the internet, or whatever, if it was done properly? Heck all of these medias are not entertainment themselves, that's why they are called medias! Fencing is the entertainment, or whatever those media provide, not what they are! That would be giving far too much credit to them.

If fencing managed to use sports newspapers at one time, why cannot they use TV, or something else? The internet?

[great bowyer]

Originally posted by edew

Look, soccer isn't going to be big in the US no matter what. The soccer folks thought they were going to be the next NFL

i'm sorry, but i think i've seen more soccer events being telivised than fencing events. with this in mind, i think the fencing community should raise it's self up before we start comparing ourselves to a more media successful sport. on the other hand, we can also compare to see what soccer is doing to get the attention that we are not getting.