Brennan: Why U.S. figure skating has fallen

[Sam-Skwantch]

Sam Skwantch said,
I am probably going to make my enemies by saying this but IN has almost entirely removed the casual viewer aspect of our sport. I don't think it's a coincidence that ratings have plummeted since its invention.

I agree completely agree with this comment. The fact that a sport who claims to be losing popularity had the nerve to charge it's fans to view an event that they could offer for free is ridiculous. Good grief, I'm in California and I can watch 10 Rounds of Wimbledon for free and I have to PAY to watch an event that's happening here in the US?? Forget it!

I'd still have IN offer free streaming but hire on TSL to handle interviews and fluff pieces. Make it have behind the scenes access and some bells and whistles to have a value but the sport itself should be made available to anyone who wants to watch it. And they need to show the entire sport.....not just the USA perspective.

They should market to the entire world.

 

[mrrice]

I'd still have IN offer free streaming but hire on TSL to handle interviews and fluff pieces. Make it have behind the scenes access and some bells and whistles to have a value but the sport itself should be made available to anyone who wants to watch it. And they need to show the entire sport.....not just the USA perspective.

They should market to the entire world.

I agree 100% :agree:

 

[Dots]

I think there are two separate issues.

As for transgender athletes--I hope I can log on the day a transgender woman wins by doing a quad and her competitors realize she has the muscles and center of gravity of a man. That will be an interesting day on Golden Skate Forum.

I don't think many people would be surprised if a Transgender woman is able to land a quad because most people that land quads are male not female. So if a male has surgery to transition to a female, surgery is not going to change the physicality, brute strength, and bone structure of his/her body. You don't erase the capabilities of your body when you transition. Surgery only alters what is there, but it doesn't change you whole anatomy.

A Transgender woman competing in the men's division doing quads? good for her.

A transgender woman landing quads left and right competing against women competitors who obviously don't share the same natural attributes and brute strength of someone who was born male? That is a complete different ballgame and an it would put women in an unfair physical disadvantage.

I say this as a gay male who respects transgender people, but also cares and respects women a lot.

 

[Mathman]

Edit: Whoa, Hope Solo is a soccer player? I always thought she was a track and field runner. well, a husband-beating track and field runner haha

They've got their Hope Solo, we've got our Tonya Harding.

So? It doesn't translate to popularity for adult soccer, which is the one that matters, for me at least. Vastly more people care about the World Cup than the Harold Elementary School's semester soccer championships.

Forbid them not, BP, forbid them not.

 

[gkelly]

Just catching up on this thread.

I think competitive skating has always been expensive and elite in the sense that 1) it takes a lot of ice time and good coaching (which take $$) to achieve competitive-level skills at all, and 2) it takes specific body types to be able to execute some required skills at all (triple jumps, pair and even dance lifts).

Just being generally athletic and hard working and loving the sport won't get you to elite levels if you're lacking one or more of the above.

I remember 40 years ago at my skating club's annual picnic overhearing a parent ask the rink owner/coach what it took to succeed in this sport: talent? hard work? His answer was "Money and access to an ice rink."

Of course in those days it was mostly about perfecting school figures, which was a different beast entirely.

Around the early 1990s two things changed that made skating more accessible to more Americans and also to more non-Americans: the elimination of school figures which required long hours of practice on pristine ice, and the elimination of the requirement that competitors must be strict amateurs forbidden to take money for teaching or performing.

Still, many competitive skaters ended up quitting for financial reasons before they'd reached their potential, and that is still true.

Participation in competitive singles skating peaked around 2004. That cohort would have included skaters who first started after the 1994 and 98 Olympics, when mass media coverage of skating was at a peak -- although much of the coverage in the 1990s was professional "competitions" and shows as well eligible competitions.

There has been a decline in the number of skaters at regionals, which probably started/accelerated with the recession in 2008 at the same time that some skaters were also turned off by the demands of IJS. However, that doesn't necessarily translate into a decline in the number of USFS members or participation in figure skating at all. Many skaters who would have quit after Basic Skills or at Intermediate level when there was no double axel on the horizon or anywhere in between have chosen to focus on Synchronized Skating or Ice Dance (solo or partnered -- the number of competitive teams in the US is currently as strong as it ever has been) or Showcase.

Does smaller singles fields at regionals than at the peak mean a smaller pool of talented skaters? Probably to some degree, but those who have left singles skating either for other skating disciplines or for non-skating activities are probably weighted more heavily toward those who would never have been elite singles skaters in the first place.

I think the US ladies' field remains deep in that it's still very competitive to get to Nationals and for those who do to make it to the podium.

This is both good and bad for international competitiveness. If skaters keep swapping titles or getting replaced on the medal stand by newcomers whenever they have a bad Nationals, it's hard for any given skater to build momentum internationally.

The latter is probably even more true of the men's field. But any senior man with above-average talent will be able to compete at Nationals almost every year.

If there were only one or two skaters with world-class potential and then a huge dropoff in ability after those outliers, those skaters would have more continuity internationally but their absence would be more strongly felt when they were injured or off their game.

But the other reason why US skaters earn fewer international medals now than 20-30-40 years ago is that the international field is much deeper as well. What's working to get Japanese and Russian ladies on the podium wouldn't necessarily work in a US context, where the training is much more decentralized for geographic and cultural and financial reasons.

The US does seem to be taking some new steps to encourage talented young skaters to start attempting triples earlier in their development. Will this lead to more senior ladies with consistent triple-triples and more senior men with consistent quads 5+ years from now, or will it lead to more career-ending injuries before the kids even make it to seniors? Quite likely both.

 

[gkelly]

The amount of eligible competition on over-the-air TV was less before 1994 than it is now, and even in the mid-late 90s if you wanted to watch short programs or see pairs and dance from fall events you needed to pay for cable TV.

There's much more skating available now on non-broadcast sources than there ever was at the peak. The biggest problem for American fans is that whereas ABC used ESPN, ESPN2, and Lifetime for its additional coverage, which most cable subscribers had access to, NBC used Universal Sports which was great for a few years and then became inaccessible in most markets for business reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with skating. If we include the coverage that is currently broadcast on NBC Universal or NBCSN (http://olympics.nbcsports.com/2015/10/01/figure-skating-tv-schedule-broadcast-2015-2016-nbc/), the amount of skating on TV is not much different than it used to be, but I don't even know if I can get those stations.

IceNetwork primarily provides coverage of events or earlier portions of events that would never have been covered on TV in the first place. Their biggest problem is the quality of feed for many people's computer setups. It would also be helpful for popularizing skating if they could market themselves to general audiences so that casual fans would know it exists, and if they could have some free trials or low-priced single-event packages people could buy to try it out.

I am probably going to make my enemies by saying this but IN has almost entirely removed the casual viewer aspect of our sport. I don't think it's a coincidence that ratings have plummeted since its invention.

I think it's more that ratings were already down, TV coverage was down, and IceNetwork stepped into the gap a couple years ago with more coverage of international events that already weren't being shown much or at all in the US. Originally it started out as a showcase for US domestic competitions, more of interest to participants or very diehard fans of unseen US skaters than as something for the general public. But they could try to build up to be more accessible to a wider audience with both technical platforms and marketing and pricing.

Of course social media is needed but I also think they need to put boots on the ground. I truly think they need to send a few of their elite skaters out on tours of the country and make stops at the rinks. They can skate with the locals and perform a little traveling gala event. Combine that with some sort of interactive media display at a public skate session and now you're starting to show people how fun the sport is and introducing them to our stars. Who wouldn't want to travel the country for a couple of weeks in June or July?

I do understand that stars on ice exists but that doesn't really reach out to local skaters in the way I think a mini tour would.

I remember after the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Swimmers Ryan Loche and Cullen Jones who were Olympic medalist went on a tour across the country visiting swim clubs and teaching kids tips about swimming and answers questions. We need something similar in figure skating. Dancing with the Stars is nice but it's not really hands on or open to the public. If we had little mini skating camp where you had world medalist and Olympic medalist like Cohen, Kwan, Evan, teaching people all about skating for kids,and adults a like I think it'd have a huge impact on the sport.

I remember something like this in the late 1990s, maybe 2000. It didn't last more than a year or a couple years that I recall. Probably because of sponsorship issues.

I love the idea but the practical aspects might be daunting.

Would such a tour need to be sponsored or would all participants pay for the privilege of meeting and skating with the skating stars?

You'd need different kinds of on-ice programs for casual fans/general public who mainly want to see stars they've heard of and maybe learn some very basic (not-yet-figure) skating skills; low-level adult and kid skaters who are already taking lessons and maybe already committed to continuing at a recreational level but who would be energized by getting to interact with some elite skaters; and skaters who are already on a competitive skating track.

Is the idea to try to get these people to wach elite skating on TV, or online, whatever the medium of choice will be -- to make them into avid fans, whether they ever skate again or not?

The well-known competitors would be the names who would draw participants. But it could also help to have more experienced coaches than teenage girls who are still focused on their own training to teach the on-ice lessons. And if we're having elite skaters come to town, it could also be useful to have them do a demonstration, with a coach or official narrating, about recognizing various skating skills, and maybe a judge or tech specialist talking about how various skills are scored, to demystify the judging for audiences if they're interested in attending that part of the residency.

Or is the goal to try to develop more elite skaters?

Turning non-skaters into recreational skaters, of all ages, could be one way to grow an audience segment that has a personal connection to the sport.

Money is always the obstacle, much moreso for creating competitors than for creating fans.

If there were suddenly millions of dollars of training grants available, how much should be allocated toward talent search among 5- to 10-year-olds who are not yet training as competitive skaters but could be encouraged to do so if recruited and offered subsidies? And how much to preteen and teen skaters who are already hard at work training and competing but could achieve much more if much of the financial burden were lifted?

 

[Sam-Skwantch]

I remember after the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Swimmers Ryan Loche and Cullen Jones who were Olympic medalist went on a tour across the country visiting swim clubs and teaching kids tips about swimming and answers questions. We need something similar in figure skating. Dancing with the Stars is nice but it's not really hands on or open to the public. If we had little mini skating camp where you had world medalist and Olympic medalist like Cohen, Kwan, Evan, teaching people all about skating for kids,and adults a like I think it'd have a huge impact on the sport.

In addition to teaching I suspect the lack of just plain old fashioned interactions with fans and fellow skaters harms the marketing potential in the eyes of sponsors for our athletes. This sport isn't like the major leagues where the stars live in mansions and make millions. They are very similar to everyone else but this isn't really being used as a selling point. By that I mean...we don't really sell the lifestyle of figure skating and TBH...I think it is there. So we're left instead with quibbling over scores because well...what else is there? In terms of marketing though....if people see athletes similar to them using a product and they aspire to be like them or just plain respect the company for supporting them...then they'll buy those products. I think the lack of exposure of the sport and in addition the mediocre use of social media as a means of existence has seriously hurt the sport and the opportunity for people to make a living off of it.

Are there videos like this of figure skaters circulating the Internet in which a sponsor is promoting themselves thru the stories of others? I'm sure there are of the top athletes but what about for second and third tier level skaters as is the example of the video below?

http://youtu.be/ioLzBhx17uY

The stories and the skills are there for the sport to last forever. Will anyone ever try to sell it is the question?

 

[WeakAnkles]

another reason is that many parents don't even know that skating is an option for their children.

when i was little, the most important thing was school. both parents worked and none of them even considered any extra-curricular activities. my parents are immigrants, idk they just didn't think about "ah my child must do a sport!" or anything like that. it just wasn't on their radar. living in california, ice skating isn't something that is thought of as a sport. it's more of a winter holiday thing when places might put up small rinks. they didn't know there were rinks that were year round. and even if i had an interest in it, i wouldn't have been able to google it or anything. i only started skating when i was 18 because i saw jason brown on TV and then followed the olympics and fell in love with it. i was able to search for rinks near my city, something i wouldnt have been able to do before. it was also extremely expensive. i doubt my parents would have been able to afford it even when i was younger, i had to pay for it myself when i started. but great competitive skaters don't start skating when they're 18, they start when they're around 3 years old. and a 3 year old doesn't know what it wants to do, it can't pay for things itself, it doesn't even know that ice skating is a sport. a lot of it comes from parents putting them in that environment.

perhaps skating is an unknown sport because it isn't portrayed as one either. you see classic movies like sandlot or just any other tv show or movie and if the kids happen to play a sport, it's usually soccer or baseball or football. ive never seen a show or movie where the child does figure skating. just recently in Inside Out, the main character played hockey. and in san fransisco, no doubt. but she got her start from skating on a pond, because she lived in the midwest or east coast. it's much more common and normal over there. but over here in the west it's just not really a thing. i dont know of any other movies or tv shows that show skating as a sport that any young kid can learn. (besides obvious skating movies like blades of fury and ice princess. blades of fury was definitely popular, but it showed them as olympic-level skaters and as adults)

but even if parents knew about skating, there's the problem of affordability. ice time, lessons, skates, maintenance, off-ice, costumes, training clothes. it's so expensive. perhaps parents don't think it's worth it spending so much on a sport. it's thought of as recreational. most of the people i see skate are from wealthy families. but they start when they're 12 or a bit older, and money can't buy you triple-triples. i see some parents and kids worrying more about buying the latest zuca bag and chloe noel and rockers skaters than actually practicing. coaches don't correct skaters with awful stroking. coaches and skating academies need to focus on the basic skills too. not just spins and jumps.


the judging is also complicated to explain. it takes like 30 minutes to explain to somebody everything and they still won't absorb the information. it's hard to understand for some reason. and dont even get me started with the judging. having to explain to somebody why a single, triple-double, and double jump program is placing 2nd above somebody who had more revolutions and was clean is difficult. i was watching with my dad the other day and he asked "why do they all skate the same routine?" all the programs look so similar.
i know that the judging system is the same in japan and russia but perhaps the scoring is at least more fair. it's irritating to see politics and unfair judging, it turns people off from the sport. it isn't something that should be glossed over lightly. it turns people away. why do men who fall score higher than somebody who was clean? quads, reputation, ect. my mom said reputation shouldn't have anything to do with it, and she's right. it's just difficult to explain. it's just too subjective. people who aren't skating fans easily realize how subjective and unfair the judging is, while us long-term fans have gotten so accustomed to it that we try to defend the judges' acts with "oh well he's the olympic champion and his PCS was higher" or "well he's the favorite". it's messed up. americans don't like unjust things.

The scoring basics for singles are not that difficult:

Skaters are scored in two ways: technically and in terms of performance. With technical scores, each element, whether it be a jump or a spin or a step sequence or the like, are assigned a base value and level depending on how difficult they are to perform. The higher the level the bigger the base value for that element. An additional score, called GOE, is added to or subtracted from that base value depending on how the judges assess the quality of the element. What is important in jumping is not the landing,but the rotation--skaters who fail to fully rotate a jump are given less points than those who do but fall on the landing. Performance is scored in five different areas. This PCS score and technical score are added together to give a total score for that particular performance.

How long did it take you to read that?

 

[mrrice]

gkelly said,

"Money is always the obstacle, much moreso for creating competitors than for creating fans."

This very true and something that was definitely a problem the people at my rink when I started skating. Now, I'm from Santa Barbara and most of the people I skated with didn't really have "Financial Problems" compared to most people. However, the problem with skating is that you can't try it out and see if you like it without spending money. You can discovery whether or not you like most sports by going to the play ground at school for free. There are Football and Soccer Fields. Tennis Courts and a great Track with one of those cool rubber like Tracks within a mile of the house and I can explore them all for free.

Maybe USFS could offer free lessons and have top level local skaters come in and volunteer their time to help promote the sport. I've done something similar with dance. I had some of my former students come in and we taught free dance class at every Junior High School that fed into our School and it was very successful. Maybe they could try something like that.

 

[ice coverage]

I think you mean, in the USA, soccer is a sport no one thinks about enough to even deem it a girl's or boy's sport.

So? It doesn't translate to popularity for adult soccer, which is the one that matters, for me at least. Vastly more people care about the World Cup than the Harold Elementary School's semester soccer championships.

(1) So your reference to girls and boys had nothing to do with girls and boys?

(2) As for the popularity of adult soccer, FYI:

More TV viewers in the U.S. cared about the final game of 2015 Women's World Cup Soccer than about the NBA Finals and the World Series :yes:.

More popular than pro basketball and pro baseball seems mighty popular to me.

Skate America or the US Figure Skating Championships would be very lucky to get one-tenth of the ratings of the women's soccer final soccer.

Nielsen estimates that Fox Sports averaged 25.4 million viewers for Sunday’s lopsided 5-2 result, which gave the U.S. its third Women’s World Cup championship. Viewership peaked with about 31 million from 8:30-8:45 p.m. ET. ...

By comparison, the recent NBA Finals on ABC peaked with 23.25 million viewers for its sixth and final game. And no NBA game has drawn a larger audience since 2010. Similarly, no Major League Baseball game has drawn more viewers since the 2004 World Series.

Excluding the NFL postseason, the only higher-rated sporting events in the U.S. this year were the three games of the College Football Championship on ESPN (33.25 million for Ohio State-Oregon in the title game and more than 28 million for two semifinal games) and the men’s college basketball title game on CBS in April between Duke and Wisconsin (28.26 million).

http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/womens-world-cup-carli-lloyd-usa-win-soccer-ratings-1201534249/ (Jul 6, 2015)​

 

[gkelly]

USFS sponsors a program called National Skating Month. (It's January! There are still a few days left. see if there's a program near you.)

http://www.usfsa.org/Programs.asp?id=426

It's not one program applied consistently across the country, but an initiative for local clubs and rinks to come up with programs that bring people into rinks, with whatever approach works with their resources and what they think will appeal to the local community. Usually not involving elite skaters . . . because it's January, and the national competitors have other priorities this month.

There are thousands of local rinks around the country, so I'm not sure how any kind of centralized program could work for all of them. The dance program you offered was local, not national, after all.

I wonder if there would be some way for USFS to launch some kind of mass media campaign over the holidays, letting people who don't regularly go to rinks know that January is National Skating Month and pointing them to where they can find information about an upcoming free skating opportunity or other program at their closest rink.

At the same time they could advertise Nationals -- in/near the host city as an opportunity to see live skating and to make available and publicize inexpensive tickets for lower level/early week events and practice sessions; nationally as an upcoming entertainment with details option with details about the TV broadcasts and IceNetwork.

If there were to be an off-season program with elite skaters traveling to different local rinks to give performances and lessons, it would still need to be decentralized at least to the point that different skaters would go to different locations in a more limited time frame, even if there were a central organization planning and directing and standardizing the content.

 

[yuzushenko]

The scoring basics for singles are not that difficult:

Skaters are scored in two ways: technically and in terms of performance. With technical scores, each element, whether it be a jump or a spin or a step sequence or the like, are assigned a base value and level depending on how difficult they are to perform. The higher the level the bigger the base value for that element. An additional score, called GOE, is added to or subtracted from that base value depending on how the judges assess the quality of the element. What is important in jumping is not the landing,but the rotation--skaters who fail to fully rotate a jump are given less points than those who do but fall on the landing. Performance is scored in five different areas. This PCS score and technical score are added together to give a total score for that particular performance.

How long did it take you to read that?

yeah, my parents don't speak english so i have to translate to them. takes a while. and i like to provide examples so that they can absorb what im talking about cuz if i just read off an explanation, they wont understand and they'll forget it. dont assume all people have your privilege.

 

[JackRoast]

It was very disappointing to listen to the interview with Christine Brennan, because she wanted to show her knowledge of the sport but unfortunately she lacks it. You cannot rely on international points because it's an obvious manipulation to promote favorites. This why the US has been behind for the last 9 years - by playing favorites the US is blocking the way for young strong talents to rise. The 2016 US Nationals is an evident example of it (Gracie winning with a poor short).

 

[brightphoton]

yeah, my parents don't speak english so i have to translate to them. takes a while. and i like to provide examples so that they can absorb what im talking about cuz if i just read off an explanation, they wont understand and they'll forget it. dont assume all people have your privilege.

not to mention, that explanation sounds really dry, jargon-filled and textbook-like. I'm a huge skating fan, and I wouldn't want to be a fan after reading that Not that I've convinced anyone to become a figure skating fan either

Sometimes I show people a video of Yuna Kim's short program and that seems to please them. Her triple-triple gets gasps everytime. I used to show Grace Gold's triple lutz-triple toe, but it has gotten smaller and inconsistent since her senior debut

 

[yuzushenko]

not to mention, that explanation sounds really dry, jargon-filled and textbook-like. I'm a huge skating fan, and I wouldn't want to be a fan after reading that Not that I've convinced anyone to become a figure skating fan either

Sometimes I show people a video of Yuna Kim's short program and that seems to please them. Her triple-triple gets gasps everytime. I used to show Grace Gold's triple lutz-triple toe, but it has gotten smaller and inconsistent since her senior debut

exactly! i like explaining everything on the protocol, what an underrotation is, what the combos look like ect. i showed them shoma uno, yuzuru hanyu, max aaron, and jason brown's grand prix performances to show an example of transitions and great spins (jason brown), interpretation/skating skills (shoma, yuzu), and lack of choreography/transitions (max aaron). lol. i mean i have to explain why a quad in the second half gets more points and is considered more difficult, ect. ect.

jumps are a bit hard to explain cuz they all look the same to untrained eyes.. and explaining why one is more difficult than the other is also a bit tricky lol. i mean the language they use on nbc for example might just say it's a more difficult jump or it takes off on an outside edge but that really doesn't mean much to a casual viewer who might have never skated before, nor know what an edge is lol.

and spins are a bit tricky to explain too. personally im not even that knowledgeable on spins either. there's positions, revolutions, traveling, jumping/flying spins, complex entrances, fits the music, ccw/cw. i dont really know about edge changes or change of foot (i can't even tell that they switched feet sometimes! it's so confusing lol). oh and zayak rules are another.

not to mention things like politics/reputation. like sometimes a less-known skater might skate clean yet still rank 9 or 10 below more famous skaters like wagner or gold who may have done mistakes. but the difficulty of the jumps, the spin and footwork levels, and PCS might matter a lot. trying to explain why a skater like courtney hicks has such low PCS and how she got a 5 for performanec execution or something, versus other famous skaters is hard. i mean a casual viewer may have very well enjoyed her performance a lot, yet it's just unclear why they got such low PCS scores. yet a performance like polina's FS might have put a viewer to sleep, yet the scores are higher in that area. angela wang was another who skated really well and had really interesting choreography and performed well yet we see her get low PCS and it's all just confusing for any viewer. and telling somebody "well the other skaters are more reputable/have been in the senior international competitions longer, ect" just sound ill-tasting. even i feel a bit bad having to give such an explanation.


lol tl;dr the point is, explaining how this sport is judged is much more complex than simply reading a paragraph and hoping all the jargon sticks.

 

[fairly4]

it isn't so much the U.S. ladies has fallen , as much as the other countries has caught up so to speak. It seems like they skate more consistent and fight for it both mentally and phyiscally. (not worried about it being a competition) .

 

[gkelly]

lol tl;dr the point is, explaining how this sport is judged is much more complex than simply reading a paragraph and hoping all the jargon sticks.

Very true.

If I had to summarize in a paragraph, for someone who had never skated or watched much skating before, I'd probably say something like

The skaters earn points for each of their elements (jump, spins, step sequences) based on difficulty as decided by a technical panel and quality as determined by the judges. Jumps can earn the most points, but there are also a lot of ways they can lose points and some of those ways require a trained eye and often slow motion replay to notice. The judges also award five component scores for various aspects of the program as a whole, including various aspects of overall performance quality. The most important single score is probably the Skating Skills component, since that's the fundamental set of skills that's being judged in a skating competition and tends to affect everything else in the performance.

 

[glorybox6]

Skate America or the US Figure Skating Championships would be very lucky to get one-tenth of the ratings of the women's soccer final soccer.

Nielsen estimates that Fox Sports averaged 25.4 million viewers for Sunday’s lopsided 5-2 result, which gave the U.S. its third Women’s World Cup championship. Viewership peaked with about 31 million from 8:30-8:45 p.m. ET. ...

By comparison, the recent NBA Finals on ABC peaked with 23.25 million viewers for its sixth and final game. And no NBA game has drawn a larger audience since 2010. Similarly, no Major League Baseball game has drawn more viewers since the 2004 World Series.​

FWIW, it looks like the big prime-time Nationals ratings this year were actually up 11 percent -- 2.3 rating and 3.7 million viewers for the women's free skate in prime time (and exceeding your one-tenth number). Though down from the most recent Olympic year numbers.
http://www.sportsmediawatch.com/201...-hoops-espn-australian-open-serena-sharapova/

 

[ice coverage]

FWIW, it looks like the big prime-time Nationals ratings this year were actually up 11 percent -- 2.3 rating and 3.7 million viewers for the women's free skate in prime time (and exceeding your one-tenth number). Though down from the most recent Olympic year numbers.
http://www.sportsmediawatch.com/201...-hoops-espn-australian-open-serena-sharapova/

Yes, I had seen the St. Paul ratings in Matilda's post (in another thread, I guess).
Thanks for posting them in this thread.
I am happy that my one-tenth reference proved to be not quite accurate. And happy that the ratings were up.

I imagine it helped that Ashley and Gracie placed only fourth and second in the SP -- adding to the suspense of the FS.

(In any case, it remains true that the numbers for women's World Cup soccer's were basically an order of magnitude higher than for St. Paul Nats.
So I still find it ridiculous that another skating fan (not you) in this thread mocked soccer as a sport that supposedly no one in the U.S. cares about.
Skating has very, very long way to go to catch up to soccer in popularity.)

 

[boskil]

Regarding development, I feel like American lady REALLY needs to take gold or silver in Boston.
Win is an obvious interest boost for World Champion, with second place you can build the whole USvs narration, fascinating heads-up game, but bronze won't make much of a difference when it comes to attracting people. It'd be just nice accolade in individual skating dossier and overall stats improvement.