What is special about the ladies?

I'm not too interested in Ladies this year because I think the Olympics will be a yawn -- Medvedeva should just pick up her crown right now.

My first interest was in pairs, because of the fantastic G & G. I didn't even give Ladies a look until Sasha Cohen came along. Last Olys we had the adorable Yulia (guess I like high extensions!)

Now I find ice dance and men more interesting. The battle between V/M and P/C will be extremely close. And as for who will win bronze - Shibs, H/D, W/P or someone else? will be spectacular to watch.

As for men, I no longer think Hanyu is a shoe-in -- will Nathen Chen do it? Other good contenders as well.

Mathman said:

Blame Sonja Henie. She is the skater who transformed figure skating from a macho display of Man against Nature, Man carving his initials into the virgin ice, into Hollywood pretty girls in short skirts.

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As a native Norwegian, I still find it weird anytime I see Henie praised so heavily in the skating world. Of course I understand the impact she had on the sport with her introducing skating outfits, white boots, actually jumping (to hell with being ladylike!), the zamboni and all that jazz, but she's relatively unknown in Norway. The few people who do know about her mostly remember her as a Nazi sympathizer who lived a garish Hollywood lifestyle while the decimated country struggled after WWII. Seems that while she popularized the sport worldwide, she did the opposite in her country. Skating was (and is) primarily seen as gaudy which is a huge no-no in Norwegian culture--we pride ourselves on living life the way our skies look: mundane, gray and drab. Until Sochi, we went 50 years without sending a woman to the Olympics when we easily could have. Even in Lillehammer, the premier event for most of the world was the ladies because of the whole Tonya & Nancy debacle... the Norwegian press? Hardly a blip. I myself remember being most excited for Gordeeva & Grinkov whom I had seen in Copenhagen for Euros the month before.

As for the question by the OP, I'd have to agree with an assessment made about being impressed by glitzy girls doing impressive things. I cover artistic gymnastics and it's the same story there too--the women in pretty much every country, except for perhaps Japan with Kohei, get the most coverage. The men are actually doing way more difficult skills than the women with their triple backs and ridiculous bar releases, but it's mind boggling seeing a little girl doing double backs or vaulting Amanars; think Olga Korbut and her impact. It's why I think Lipnitskaya got so popular after Sochi; there's something so alluring about an adorable 15-year old girl reeling off triple jumps and spinning like a top while interpreting the music of Schindler's List.

Personally, I find the men most interesting now because of how mercurial the competitions have become. You can't really predict what'll happen until they actually happen. It's exciting in that sense and it's why I like following sports... to go through the motions as the events unfold. And because people like Hanyu are pushing the sport where skaters can't just be jumping quads, the programs as a result are more interesting and varied. I still follow the women of course, but I don't get excited before an event because 99% of the time, I can guess what'll happen.

Are there any earnings or ratings information that shows that ladies is indeed the most watched or popular discipline, and by how much?

I can somewhat understand ladies being a hot topic of discussion in an English and predominantly North America forum such as Golden Skate, but when the ISU or Federations talk about popularity of the sport I’ve gotta think their main concern is generating revenue.

Curious to see how things stack up in terms of ticket sales and ratings or ad revenue across the four disciplines. I imagine is different for each country as some may not even air the entirety or majority of dance or pairs on TV compared to air time for singles.

In terms of ticket sales, I know that international event tickets in Japan are extremely hard to come by and they have a lottery system and it appears they sell out for all disciplines. The Olympic tickets seem to be similar with certain disciplines selling better than others but I haven’t heard of major issues getting tickets for Grand Prix events or a Challenger event (with exception of Autumn Classic this year which sold out on certain days).

People say and do different things. You know, anguish and envy make people do strange things.

Figure Skating has been been here for a long time and it will continue to do so. It has thrived before Eteri and it will continue to thrive long after she's gone.

[email protected] said:

Why is that? What is special about the ladies in figure skating to make it the center spot of discussion and interest?

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I think it's even more primal than culture, it's antropological thing.
Reversing the question, I can't recall many societies in history of mankind with solo dancing men using their grace and flexibility to allure/impress women.

In general, it's rather features like agility, speed, strength, stamina, violence, brains etc., that have been seeked by women in men and admired/envied by other men, hence the quads, their type, number, etc. are more frequently discussed in media than 'artisticism' of male skater.

Several years ago, I posted statistics I had accumulated from the Grand Prix discussions on this board. I counted the total number of posts in each thread for Ladies, Mens, Pairs, and Ice dance at each GP competition (SP + LP). For each GP event, I discovered there were approximately twice the number of posts for each of Mens and Ladies, than for Pairs or Ice dance. I don’t recall there was a significant difference between Mens and Ladies, although I wasn’t looking for that.

A couple years later, I accumulated the statistics again (although I did not post it), and did not find any change in GS member’s posting habits. Do TV networks interested in cutting costs, come to these boards to gather statistics? If so, it is easy to understand why NBC would typically only focus on singles skating, and mostly ignore Pairs and Ice dance. A quick glance at the current GP events in Russia, Canada, and China so far, do not alter that posting pattern.



ETA: Just totalled the posts for the three GP events so far...

<posts>/<views>

Rostelecom Cup 2017
L = 2086/135118
M = 1314/87891
P = 706/26191
I = 611/37586

Skate Canada International 2017
L = 3110/246224
M = 1742/110825
P = 764/43600
I = 1017/69831

Cup of China 2017
L = 2118/146158
M = 1352/78092
P = 453/23808
I = 877/53255

Because maybe there has been so many "drama" and "rivalries" in Ladies' figure skating? "The Battle of the Carmens", Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan, Surya Bonaly, Yuna Kim and Mao Asada etc. People like to make use of these hot topics to attract viewers that push ratings and sales.

And there has been quite some "unexpected" results like Sarah Hughes winning in Salt Lake, Michelle never winning an OGM etc.

And there are more dramatic and aesthetic effects in Ladies figure skatings; spirals, crazy spins, ina bauers etc. This is why I love ladies figure skating.

.
I would bet the reason behind the skew in public interest (and, perhaps to some extent for members on GS) for certain skating discipline(s) is more mundane than many here are suggesting. In my mind, the general public's interest in one discipline over another is very heavily influenced by the media in their home country; and the media, in-turn, is more highly motivated and interested to show 'winners' or 'contenders' — especially during Olympic seasons.

I would bet that if someone was to analyze the top-5 or top-6 contenders in each of the four disciplines each year (and especially Olympic years) that audience discipline preferences in the bigger figure skating TV markets would correlate strongly to whether that country had a contender in the running for a World medal.

To give a long-term example: the Soviet Union / Russia dominated the podiums in both Pairs and Dance for many, many years [with the occasional 'sprinkling' of a European couple on one of the lower rungs of the podium]. Only in the past decade have North American teams burst onto the scene and begun to offer contenders for the World and Olympic podium. For Dance especially, television coverage this past decade in Canada and the US has grown many multiples compared to the previous 30 years; and with it, so has general audience size and interest in Ice Dance. It's no coincidence that this increase in press coverage (TV and newspapers/magazines) and public interest coincided with the feats of Virtue & Moir and Davis & White and the breakthrough of North American couples placing 1st and 2nd at the 2010 Olympics, followed by the remarkable 1-2-3 sweep of the Dance podium at the 2011 Worlds by American and Canadian teams! For those who've been around skating for 20+ years .... just think of how ridiculous it would have been had someone predicted in the 1990's that some day in the not-too-far-off future, North American teams would dominate Ice Dance!?! In fact, it was probably still completely unthinkable as late as 2005 — just 5 years prior to the Vancouver Olympics!

To summarize ... my basic premise is this: That if you go back 30+ years and look at which countries had skaters/teams in contention for a World medal each year, that generally speaking, audience size and interest for certain discipline(s) [Dance vs. Pairs vs. Men vs. Ladies] within that country would skew accordingly. Although I'd argue 'contention' is the stronger predictive variable, it's somewhat difficult to determine (without a time machine, or a super-memory); so one could substitute the actual top-5 placements at Worlds in each discipline when determining if any multi-year correlation to audience size/interest exists. But, I'll leave the correlation and regression modelling, and any multivariate analysis for someone else to provide... :think:

sowcow said:

...In my mind, the general public's interest in one discipline over another is very heavily influenced by the media in their home country; and the media, in-turn, is more highly motivated and interested to show 'winners' or 'contenders' — especially during Olympic seasons...

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That is probably true. However, I recall some members complaining NBC still did not broadcast Ice dance, despite D/W winning events.

rvi5 said:

Several years ago, I posted statistics I had accumulated from the Grand Prix discussions on this board. I counted the total number of posts in each thread for Ladies, Mens, Pairs, and Ice dance at each GP competition (SP + LP). For each GP event, I discovered there were approximately twice the number of posts for each of Mens and Ladies, than for Pairs or Ice dance. I don’t recall there was a significant difference between Mens and Ladies, although I wasn’t looking for that.

A couple years later, I accumulated the statistics again (although I did not post it), and did not find any change in GS member’s posting habits. Do TV networks interested in cutting costs, come to these boards to gather statistics? If so, it is easy to understand why NBC would typically only focus on singles skating, and mostly ignore Pairs and Ice dance. A quick glance at the current GP events in Russia, Canada, and China so far, do not alter that posting pattern.



ETA: Just totalled the posts for the three GP events so far...

Rostelecom Cup 2017
L = 2086
M = 1314
P = 706
I = 611

Skate Canada International 2017
L = 3110
M = 1742
P = 764
I = 1017

Cup of China 2017
L = 2118
M = 1352
P = 453
I = 877

Click to expand...

I remember last year 4cc men's SP had tons of pages before even the event started as it was the big confrontation between yuzu and nathan....

I think we have to also consider that this forum is "American" hosted and probably most users are from North America which means that the number of posts in competition threads may vary depending of the time of presentation of GP events.... we can see that Skate Canada attracted a lot more posters... perhaps because there are more users active in that time period...

Also, if we look only at American interest, assuming that there are more American posters :

Pairs for instance seems to attract less Americans, and that's expected this year because of the dip in rankings their teams are taking.

Ladies : huge interest in Canada as the top 2 American ladies, Ashley and Karen were competing.

Ice dance : very strong North American contingent at Skate Canada and by far the largest amount of posts for that discipline so far.

Pairs in Canada : amazing roster but the time of the event was extremely late for North Americans, making it impossible almost for Europeans to watch S/M and J/C battle with D/R.

Pairs in China : very early in the morning for this segment on the East Coast (on a Saturday)... and as it is such a short event with the top 2 teams pretty much locks, I am sure many thought they'd watch videos...


So, yes, popularity is probably the most important factor... but I would think that there are circumstantial factors like headliners, ( I think NHK might suffer a bit from the usual Yuzu vs Patrick annual event now that Patrick has w/d), time of day, results after the short program....Grand Prix Final "must win" for some... etc...

rvi5 said:

Several years ago, I posted statistics I had accumulated from the Grand Prix discussions on this board. I counted the total number of posts in each thread for Ladies, Mens, Pairs, and Ice dance at each GP competition (SP + LP). For each GP event, I discovered there were approximately twice the number of posts for each of Mens and Ladies, than for Pairs or Ice dance. I don’t recall there was a significant difference between Mens and Ladies, although I wasn’t looking for that.

A couple years later, I accumulated the statistics again (although I did not post it), and did not find any change in GS member’s posting habits. Do TV networks interested in cutting costs, come to these boards to gather statistics? If so, it is easy to understand why NBC would typically only focus on singles skating, and mostly ignore Pairs and Ice dance. A quick glance at the current GP events in Russia, Canada, and China so far, do not alter that posting pattern.



ETA: Just totalled the posts for the three GP events so far...

Rostelecom Cup 2017
L = 2086
M = 1314
P = 706
I = 611

Skate Canada International 2017
L = 3110
M = 1742
P = 764
I = 1017

Cup of China 2017
L = 2118
M = 1352
P = 453
I = 877

Click to expand...

Interesting, although I would factor in page views rather than posts. I think some people may lurk on the different competition threads for PBP news sometimes but never post a thing yet I think it measures a different type of engagement.

I think the issue can be viewed from multiple angles.

Like many of You already pointed - there's this primal appeal to witness unique, exciting skills: flexibility, difficulty, integration of them in programs; there goes also the whole 'outlook': costuming, styling, music. Those are eye-/ear-catching and make people interested in stuff presented. As for the skill - this it totally understandable to have the high interest kept in Ladies by so many people, if Russian/Korean/Japanese young ladies are coming with guns blazing technically-wise, season after season. People are amazed by them and step by step get invested more emotionally/personally in their path/journey, how they will do in the future etc., this then could be a reason to keep an interest in the whole discipline.

There goes 'drama tradition' associated with Ladies FS throughout years - 'good' and 'evil' characters, who was better, who deserved the win, who was people's darling...Lots of people strive on such stuff happening, waiting for it to get out of the pretty façade made form glitter and glam. This could be associated with searching for this 'human' part in this sport made to look pretty and effortless: people want to see the real, raw emotions behind those Ladies, not only how skilful they are, hence maybe keeping on watching.

But for me, comments and the interest in Ladies measured by number of posts/statistics is sometimes more co-related with the opinions posted by others than the actual stuff happening on ice. What we get is performances, results, scores - we see them, then acknowledge, but our reactions are what sparks huge interest I feel, being related to the Ladies discipline, but also getting much broader than that. This whole process of 'convincing' other people watching to someone's point of view, opinion, judgement - based on numbers, rules or just plain personal preference - is oddly fascinating and alluring to witness and engage in. Some people already personally invested in particular Ladies will usually try to defend their favourite in the eyes of others, justify her score, result, especially if aforesaid are sparking controversies; then, other people will engage making their points about that skater in comparison to others, then - another viewers will engage to express their minds and so on...

Sometimes I feel that the actual skating, the competition is only a canvas made, a mere catalyst to get the interest machine running, in terms of showing this 'interest' out there for public. The only pity thing is that there is so much toxic material made out of this 'interest', often not even related to the actual skating, which personally causes to take off my 'interest' in particular discipline altogether.

Ladies is dominating specifically in North America. American marketing machine at work. Pretty girls in sparkling costumes sell products, all kinds of. Men, not so much. In other places performance isn't so tied down to product sales. I think we need to acknowledge the fact that American preference isn't the golden rule or anything. This board is predominantly North American. It doesn't really prove the point. Hanyu is still the most popular athlete across disciplines. Even if Nathan Chen wins OGM he isn't going to be anywhere near Hanyu's status.
I prefer to watch ladies and dance on screen, but in the arena men and pairs are way more impressive.

kiches said:

Interesting, although I would factor in page views rather than posts. I think some people may lurk on the different competition threads for PBP news sometimes but never post a thing yet I think it measures a different type of engagement.

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I am one of them. Usually I watch the competition and follow the thread on my lap. I like to read the opinions about the jumps, pops and some posters make a summary really fast. But as soon as the competition finishes, give thanks to the readers and rush off there, especially in ladies and men threads, because the bickering in those threads is

I find men and pairs event equally exciting, ice dance moderately exciting, ladies not so much, simply because I find that more programmes engage me in those first two events than the other two. And it doesn't always mean that a programme has to be powerful and fast - I get equally tuned in to a performance which is lyrical, soft and artistic, with plenty of heart and soul.

Too many of the ladies' programmes are just 'meh' to me. So far this season I can count the number of ladies LPs which I really love on one hand, with ice dance a few more, but a LOT of pairs and mens programmes which have totally amazed me.

I can't really explain why.

kiches said:

Interesting, although I would factor in page views rather than posts. I think some people may lurk on the different competition threads for PBP news sometimes but never post a thing yet I think it measures a different type of engagement.

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I updated my original post to include thread views. However, it does not significantly change the results. The more posts the thread receives, the longer it stays at the top of the forum. The longer it stays at the top, the more views it will obtain. Hence the relative numbers are typically more or less proportional to the post count.

I wonder if there are any sports that have women not wearing skimpy clothing that is popular world wide. Can't think of any.

Initially I got hook up with the ladies because of how pretty they look while doing very nice jumps and spins.

Honestly, my interest now with the ladies is sustanied because of the drama that comes with it.

Generally Im a japanese/asian skaters fan but since the rise of the "western vs eastern", "good vs evil", it made me curious to look into other skaters. It doesnt help that NBC/other networks and commentators are not even subtle about it anymore

Usually Im not a Russian fan but in the last 2-3 years with the rise of their young skaters and Ilinyk's roller coster drama career, my figure skating interest really rose up.

Now there's japanese drama brewing up and so ready for it

1. Media ... how many years did we hear the American media talk about the U.S. Ladies Drought for World Medals, before the drought ended in 2016? How many times have you heard the same media mention the U.S. Men's Drought for Worlds Medals? U.S. men haven't won a world medal since 2009. Even now, when many feel the Men's Drought could end in 2018, no one is framing the question that way.

2. Buzz. Some ladies are talked about, I don't know, 5 to 10 times more than other ladies who, if we looked only at results or other objective factors, would seem logically to warrant equal "buzz." The best example is Gracie Gold. Until her recent withdrawals, any thread in which she was mentioned would magically swell; and some people complained that there were too many threads devoted to her. It kept on happening anyway. Obviously, this attention wasn't always a good thing.

3. Estrogen Power. This OP question reminds me of a Fluff Pro competition in the 1990s, where it was teams of women vs. teams of men. Some face-offs measured specific skills, like I recall Katia Gordeeva winning a segment for spinning. Anyway, the participants were being asked questions. Someone asked Josef Sobovcik a question; I only remember his answer: "Well, they'll always look better than us, no matter what we do!"

4. Why Ladies? It seems like similar dynamics are going on. I've read all the answers in this thread so far, and I find them very interesting and agree with a number of them. I guess maybe - it's a mystery!

rvi5 said:

I updated my original post to include thread views. However, it does not significantly change the results. The more posts the thread receives, the longer it stays at the top of the forum. The longer it stays at the top, the more views it will obtain. Hence the relative numbers are typically more or less proportional to the post count.

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Yes I was thinking about this after I mentioned the thread views and actually thinking number of unique members that enter/view a thread was actually a better idea of how many are interested in a discipline - with constant bickering there’s a lot of posts or views likely from the same handful of people.

Anyone have any stats on profitability? Sometimes I see the large number of empty seats at the smaller events and wonder if they are able to break even on event costs.

When the ISU talks about popularity of the sport I do assume they bring it back to money earned. For the events it’s ticket sales and merchandise sales at the venue, for broadcast it’s likely commercials. I don’t have cable so I’m stuck with NBC with Tara and Johnny, but the majority of ads are Viking Cruises and SPCA, although prime time broadcasts seem to be more varied on advertisements. The typical broadcast time for me ends up being noon to 3 PM on the west coast on a Saturday or Sunday, which I imagine is a lot tougher to take in viewers. Even as a skating fan I rarely catch the broadcast on TV because it’s a) pre-recorded and I’ve already watched it elsewhere and b) I’m rarely at home when they broadcast. Even Ice Network which is a paid streaming service has some minimal ads and I think it’s usuallt for Viking Cruises as well.

Japanese media sometimes publish viewership stats for competitions. I think last year they saw a dip in viewers (likely due to Yuzuru’s withdrawal) with the highest viewership recorded when Mao skated (I’d need to dig up the article to get exact %). For Worlds in Helsinki Men’s SP rating averaged 16.3% for Fuji TV with a peak of 25.1% during Yuzuru’s SP. I think the ratings were similar for Yuzuru’s FS at Rostelecom in October At 25.4%. The original article is no longer available so I’m not sure if they listed average for that event. Supposedly getting 15% during prime time is considered very good in Japan so clearly it’s popularity there is doing well in generating revenue. I notice that board ads also have Japanese ads (I have a fun time trying to guess what they are) and I know in Boston and Helsinki there were Japanese video ads playing in the arena. It makes me wonder if ad time during live figure skating broadcasts in Japan are extremely expensive.