Which discipline is the most popular? And why?

bobbob · Dec 8, 2018

I think one reason why we think dance and pairs is not as popular is that this is a Western based forum. Dance and pairs have traditionally been dominated by a select few countries, often former Eastern/Soviet type countries where it is easy to find a partner and the country has dedicated resources for doing so. Thus, these non-Western countries have excelled. In Russia and China pairs is very popular.

Ladies and men are more egalitarian, anyone who is really good at skating can excel. There is more diversity in country, particularly western countries. Ladies are more popular than men for obvious reasons, I wont state them explicitly but people generally enjoy watching women on TV more than they enjoy watching men.

chopinskate · Dec 8, 2018

Shanshani said:
Actually, going off the fan forum activity, men's is the most popular discipline in China, and Yuzuru the most popular skater. I don't think nationalism is as strong as you might expect in determining discipline popularity.

I'm not sure how indicative those would be of viewership counts or overall popularity, I already knew about the online factions. I also wouldn't call supporting a discipline with a lot of their contenders "nationalism".

Pairs also had proponents in S/Z for the Chinese, which could give out an ID-in-the-UK-like status.

iluvtodd · Dec 8, 2018

gkelly said:
Also, I think there's a difference between what's popular with the general public and what's popular with dedicated skating fans who follow the sport on a regular basis.

:agree:

For me, personally, the men, but for the general public, I know of so many people who seem to focus only on the ladies (don't get me wrong, I :love:

watching them too).

I agree that it depends on the country.

Maria Anna · Dec 8, 2018

For me ladies, men, pairs and dance but for the general public I think it is men, ladies, dance and pairs.

Shanshani · Dec 8, 2018

chopinskate said:
I'm not sure how indicative those would be of viewership counts or overall popularity, I already knew about the online factions. I also wouldn't call supporting a discipline with a lot of their contenders "nationalism".

Pairs also had proponents in S/Z for the Chinese, which could give out an ID-in-the-UK-like status.

I mean, it's not just forum activity--for instance, when I was at ACI there were a lot of Chinese people in the audience, and I don't think they flew halfway across the world to see Wang/Liu and Chen/Sun compete. Plus, Yuzuru is more.popular than Boyang Jin (especially as of late, sadly

), so I don't think Chinese competitors are the primary driver of men's popularity. Actually, I think ladies might be more popular than pairs even, recently (though that might just be due to Sui/Han's absence from the circuit lately).

You could probably settle the question by looking at the QQ stream viewer numbers. My impression is that men's gets the highest viewing numbers, but I'd have to check that.

moonvine · Dec 9, 2018

bunnybarista said:
I'm kind of the opposite - I pretty much only watch ice dance, then a bit of pairs, and ocassionally ladies and men. Yes, it always surprises me how few people watch pairs and ice dance as they are such interesting disciplines - skating with another person in and of itself takes so much, and then the incredible lifts and footwork! And for people who enjoy freestyle, seeing the outrageous throw-jumps and death spirals in pairs seems like it would be even more riveting!

It's a matter of exposure in the US (don't know about other countries). NBC shows a lot more of ladies and men than of pairs and ice dance, though MUCH more ice dance is shown than when we never medalled at it. Seriously, during their recap of the GPs they would show ONE pair (the winning one) as well as some US pairs (not even all of them). Unfortunately pairs is dying as a discipline, which I hate because I love pairs.

gkelly · Dec 9, 2018

moonvine said:
Unfortunately pairs is dying as a discipline, which I hate because I love pairs.

It's not dying as a discipline.

In 2017 and 2018 there were 28 pairs at Worlds, which is an all-time record. I believe the previous record had been 25 in 1997.

In 2018 there were 15 senior pairs at US Nationals. That's not a record -- 19 in 2009 seems to have been the peak, certainly in this century -- but it was the highest number since 2010. Most of the intervening years had 12 senior pairs.

22 juvenile teams competed at sectionals this season. Not all of them will make it to higher levels in this discipline, but that seems to be a healthy number compared with previous seasons. It's not always easy to search for exact numbers at lower levels.

Pair fields have always been much smaller than singles fields, and notably smaller than dance fields, for reasons inherent in the nature of the sport:
You have to get 2 skaters together who are willing to skate together, who are well matched physically and are compatible in their goals and training philosophy, and at the international level they need to be able to represent the same country.

Smaller federations might have a handful of singles skaters who are currently good enough to compete at an international senior or junior level. But even if they want to skate pairs, they might not be the right size or the right age or the right skill level for each other. So then they'd need to look abroad for potential partners. Even in larger federations, it's not always possible to find someone just right close to home.

Dance has many of the same issues, but size difference is less important, and it's just a less dangerous discipline in general and therefore likely to have broader appeal. Also, it's possible to train many dance skills, especially pattern dances, without a permanent partner, while hoping to find one. It's pretty much impossible to train pair skills on one's own.

narcissa · Dec 9, 2018

Shanshani said:
Actually, going off the fan forum activity, men's is the most popular discipline in China, and Yuzuru the most popular skater. I don't think nationalism is as strong as you might expect in determining discipline popularity.

Totally anecdotal story of course, but I was skating at Bryant Park the other day when a girl came up to me and asked me when she could start learning how to spin. She said she had been skating for almost a month after watching a lot of figure skating on TV, and it was a lot more difficult than it looked

I said "You must be a fan of Yuzuru Hanyu" and she was like "How do you know" and I was like "I know exactly what you mean

" And we exchanged phone numbers so we could talk about Yuzu. LOL.

So yeah...I do think anecdotally that I've seen more people be interested in the men's discipline than ladies nowadays, when usually, especially with casual viewers, it is more or less only the ladies. But the men's discipline really gets people quite involved, as can be seen by the ticket sales (even in Japan).

skatenewbie · Dec 9, 2018

i love good footwork, steps, choreo. but as much as i love them i also love jumps, that's why i prefer Ladies and Men singles. i watch pairs and dance too but not as often as singles. i really like ice dance twizzles and steps though

Arriba627 · Dec 10, 2018

Many years ago, the great Russian pairs kindled my interest in skating, just in general. But I find that today I still LOVE pairs, with men's coming in a super close second. Ladies would be third, ice dance last. However, my interests do not necessarily reflect what I see in our public. I have attended 3 Sk Americas, and the ladies has always been the most popular discipline. Next I would say men's, and probably pairs and ice dance about equal, or pairs a little bit ahead.

We have so many wonderful U.S. ice dancers, but I think although a lot of people find it beautiful, they are totally mystified by the scoring. I just had someone say to me "I don't understand how they score the ice dance." :drama:

Oh dear, don't look at me! :laugh:

...Of course these are just my opinions, and someone else might have a totally different take on it.

Mathman · Dec 10, 2018

bobbob said:
Ladies are more popular than men for obvious reasons, I wont state them explicitly but people generally enjoy watching women on TV more than they enjoy watching men.

Do you think so? According to this list, 6 of the top ten highest paid actors on TV are men. (Granted, four of them are the four nerdy young scientists on the Big Bang Theory.

)

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/17/the-10-highest-paid-actors-and-actresses-on-tv.html

If you are just talking about sports, all the top-watched sports programs are men playing various forms of ball (Serena Williams notwithstanding). In the U.S. alone, 100,000,000 people line up to see Tom Brady throw a football or Lebron James shoot a basket.

mrrice · Dec 10, 2018

Mathman said:
Do you think so? According to this list, 6 of the top ten highest paid actors on TV are men. (Granted, four of them are the four nerdy young scientists on the Big Bang Theory. )

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/17/the-10-highest-paid-actors-and-actresses-on-tv.html

If you are just talking about sports, all the top-watched sports programs are men playing various forms of ball (Serena Williams notwithstanding). In the U.S. alone, 100,000,000 people line up to see Tom Brady throw a football or Lebron James shoot a basket.

Currently, in the US. I have to go with the Men due to Nathan's success. As the current World Champion, he gets more press than Bradie and I think he deserves it. I actually think our Ice Dancers are more popular than the pairs as we haven't a had pair do well at Worlds in quite a while.

StephenGfan · Dec 10, 2018

Why is pairs the least popular?

Obviously we know why singles is more popular than pairs but what the deal breaker that makes ice dance more popular?

mrrice · Dec 10, 2018

StephenGfan said:
Obviously we know why singles is more popular than pairs but what the deal breaker that makes ice dance more popular?

In the US.....I think it's a lack of depth and our recent showings at Worlds. I can't think of the last US pair to make the Podium at Worlds. I don't believe even Ina and Zimmerman medaled at Worlds did they? It's sad but, I think Kristi and Rudy or maybe it was Tai and Randy that were the last pair to Podium at Worlds.

Manitou · Dec 10, 2018

Ladies 75%
Dance 20%
Men 4%
Pairs 1%

Weathergal · Dec 10, 2018

mrrice said:
In the US.....I think it's a lack of depth and our recent showings at Worlds. I can't think of the last US pair to make the Podium at Worlds. I don't believe even Ina and Zimmerman medaled at Worlds did they? It's sad but, I think Kristi and Rudy or maybe it was Tai and Randy that were the last pair to Podium at Worlds.

Yes, Kyoko Ina / John Zimmerman were on the podium at Worlds. They earned a bronze in 2002.

Before that, it was Jenni Meno / Todd Sand winning silver in 1998.

Mathman · Dec 10, 2018

It's a conundrum to me. By all rights pairs ought to be the most popular discipline of all. It requires basically the same individual skills as singles skating does, plus partnering skills and broader choreographic opportunity.

Compared to ice dance, at least no one questions that pairs skating is a "real sport."

Yet it is no more popular these days than synchronized diving. I don't know.

Eloise14 · Dec 10, 2018

I think in the US, the skill of Russias pairs teams is discouraging.

Russia has dominated pairs skating for decades and they have SO many pairs teams (I look at their juniors and wonder how they can even move up?)

A young US skater may look at ice dance and pairs and see that it's so rare for another country's pairs team to beat a Russian pairs team but then look at ice dance and say I might have a shot.

tothepointe · Dec 10, 2018

StephenGfan said:
Obviously we know why singles is more popular than pairs but what the deal breaker that makes ice dance more popular?

Ice dance adds in something that the singles or the pairs don't have. Which is the relationship to ballroom dance and a strong storytelling component. It's rare you'll have a top ice dance team that is not artistic.

CellarDweller · Dec 10, 2018

I guess it depends on the person. I would rather watch pairs than ice-dance. The only ice-dance routine that I really got excited to see was Bourne & Kraatz's "Riverdance".

Which discipline is the most popular? And why?

bobbob

chopinskate

iluvtodd

Maria Anna

Shanshani

moonvine

All Hail Queen Gracie

gkelly

narcissa

skatenewbie

Arriba627

TWO-TIME WORLD CHAMPION 🔥

Mathman

mrrice

StephenGfan

mrrice

Manitou

Weathergal

Mathman

Eloise14

tothepointe

CellarDweller

Ice Time

Similar threads

Connect with us