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Proposals to ISU Congress 2018-2019 Season
- Thread starter Danny T
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- Feb 28, 2012
And in the end...?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myClzw4lG08
I don't think I am able to watch it live because of my timezone, but I hope we'll have the video later.
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What on earth was going on in Kosovo?!
Sounds like people were throwing water bottles at each other and they were bursting. Although I wonder how much bad luck was incurred by opening all those umbrellas inside...
I gotta say though, Japan's Government doesn't mess around...Although I was most confused by Ukraine...what was with the bouquet of flowers for?!!
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I thought maybe it was supposed to be a romantic moment? He did sweep the guy off his feet.
But around the 0:45 mark... were those smoke bombs? And an unconscious guy?
The Hong Kong guys looked like they were having fun, at least. That one casually-dressed man was totally just taking a nap on the floor.
I should get a job in Parliament.
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- Jan 12, 2004
The Kosovo paper wad "stoning" was my favorite. They must fight dirty in Turkey--a bunch of them ganged up on one guy.
Not sure about the guy in Ukraine who gave the man flowers, then tried to carry him off. Whatever he was trying to do, I'm pretty sure it would be illegal in 47 states and the District of Columbia.
ISU is going to livestream their Congress from Jun 4-8 on their channel for the first time in history.
https://www.isu.org/news/145-news/12087-isu-congress-2018-seville-esp-preview?templateParam=15
Oh boy
Good. Figure skaters all over the world can hear and see what their representatives are saying, if they are interested of course. I’d like to bet that many top athletes and coaches, or other officials in their own countries do not have input or are asked for their input into some of these proposals that are put up in their country name. It seems to be the same few with vested interests there for decades while the skaters come and go. A judges’ paradise.
I just realized with the. We +5 -5 GOE it would be very possible to see judges have splits between +2 and +5 pretty frequently.
Say one judge fells the jump didn’t hit one of the three main criteria’s and therefore only awards a +2, even though the element is timed to music and has a difficult entry.
While another judge feels all 3 main criteria are met and the final two as well.
At least from what I understand of the new scoring?
Say one judge fells the jump didn’t hit one of the three main criteria’s and therefore only awards a +2, even though the element is timed to music and has a difficult entry.
While another judge feels all 3 main criteria are met and the final two as well.
At least from what I understand of the new scoring?
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Which will also make it more difficult for us to assess the judges variances on scoring when looking at their marks. It’s kind of got a Wild West feel to it
Well you can make fun of it, name it "idols", name it "heroes" but here's a thing. On Twitter and in forums like this one, we are pretty knowledgeable about the sport, but there is also the "outside perspective". As a Eurosport commentator I often talk to my colleagues about figure skating and how they see the sport. Even they are not average viewers, as they have a sports background and more or less a trained eye to watch sports in general (albeit not ours but their own sport). So they asked me many times "how can you see this is a quad or a triple?", "why is it so interesting?", "I see this guy fall two times, how can the scores be so high?". Then this winter I saw even 'macho' type commentators with tears in their eyes when they watched Carolina, or Aliona and Bruno - no quads needed.
Is sport entertainment? Yes, to some extent. For sure we have to embrace 'citius, altius, fortius' too. I have nothing against quads. I love skating. I have huge respect for the coaching structure in the top-countries and for all athletes pushing the boundaries. But we have to think about the outside perspective, about increasing the fan base, getting stadiums full, being back as the sport that everyone talks about, and in a positive way. If we continue like this we will have a continuous sweep of 15-16yo on the Senior podiums because I can not realistically see 20+ yo women doing quads and no one apart from the die-hard fan and incrowd will be interested in our sport much longer.
So in the end it will be a philosophical discussion on 'how we see our sport" when it comes to discussing the age limit. Regardless of the outcome, it is good that this discussion is taking place NOW. As we are seeing a technical development like never before and we have to seriously think of how we define the sport. And that is why I pushed for so many proposals that have merit in their own right, but can be seen as a package showing a vision, combined with some proposals of others too.
Sorry, there are so many messages everywhere that I can pick up only on few of them. At the same time I am working on the scenarios. It is quite interesting!
I actually watch figure skating for simple entertainment value, and most of the time cannot tell if someone jumped a triple or a quad, never mind which type. I don’t particularly feel the need to know, either, which probably makes me a strange kind of fan who willingly pays a lot of money to go to competitions without really understanding what she’s seeing. ;-)
The heroes or idols thing is a bit of a question mark for me, though. I follow juniors as closely as seniors, but many people only watch seniors competitions, simply because those get televized. By raising the age limit for seniors, doesn’t that give people less chance to develop an interest in any particular skater, as the skaters will only be in seniors fewer years than before, and thus less exposed to the big public? And why would the general public stop liking the sports when it’s 15-16 year-olds winning instead of older girls?
Anyway, these proposals are very interesting and certainly struck a chord with many fans! Good luck
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The heroes or idols thing is a bit of a question mark for me, though. I follow juniors as closely as seniors, but many people only watch seniors competitions, simply because those get televized. By raising the age limit for seniors, doesn’t that give people less chance to develop an interest in any particular skater, as the skaters will only be in seniors fewer years than before, and thus less exposed to the big public? And why would the general public stop liking the sports when it’s 15-16 year-olds winning instead of older girls?
Anyway, these proposals are very interesting and certainly struck a chord with many fans! Good luck
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I'm going to focus on this. As a sport that is increasing it's younger audience day by day (and a LOT of the male skaters have fans who are teenagers and young adults), why isn't the FIRST step trying to decrease ticket costs? Surely it will attract more audience then. The rate of audience growth will probably counter initial deficits very quickly. Has there been any marketing research done here at all? Why is what you propose the first thing that comes to mind?
Young adults watch YouTube and use streaming websites. They won't go to competitions that they can't afford to go to and they won't pay for television when YouTube is free. The ISU can keep blocking them, and keep driving the audience farther away. I will always question why the tickets are so costly.
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Unless a given competition is right in your hometown, going to a major international competition will generally involve several hundred dollars in travel/lodging costs right out of the gate. Anybody with that kind of money isn’t likely to be much-incentivized by the tickets costing $50 less.
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Even within the hometown/nearby, is it likely that the costs are going to attract the younger audience?
As a younger fan who would like to attend competitions (I haven’t been to one yet) - I would say that costly tickets are not really the main factor why I haven’t attended a competition. The main factor is that the competitions are so spread out around the world - and travel costs (and having to take time off as well) are the main limiting factor.
I will use Nathan as an example since I am most familiar with him. Many of his fans are younger/teenagers who simply do not have the resources and/or time to travel to watch him compete. If the competition happens to be in their area - that would be great - but this situation would be quite rare for most fans.
The ISU can’t help that international travel costs are too high for many younger fans to afford. I am not familiar with the ticket prices for all events - but I do recall looking at tickets for Milan worlds and they didn’t seem to be unreasonably expensive.
I will use Nathan as an example since I am most familiar with him. Many of his fans are younger/teenagers who simply do not have the resources and/or time to travel to watch him compete. If the competition happens to be in their area - that would be great - but this situation would be quite rare for most fans.
The ISU can’t help that international travel costs are too high for many younger fans to afford. I am not familiar with the ticket prices for all events - but I do recall looking at tickets for Milan worlds and they didn’t seem to be unreasonably expensive.
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How likely is it that you would go to SA, 4CC19, or a worlds competition if it's held in the US, given the current ticket costs, though?
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But the original post was talking about increasing the fan base beyond the die-hards.
So for the casual or potential fans (who wouldn't travel overnight to see figure skating) the lower price could very well be the incentive needed to attend competitions that are not too far away.
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The "idols" reason wasn't the most issue I had with this, though it's a pretty dumb reason in itself. The reason that I took the most issue with was the "reason" that older women were "afraid" of competing against the younger girls. That is an absolute GARBAGE reason and makes a mockery and a laughingstock of our SPORT. This is a SPORT!
This is not all the ISU's fault, though. Obviously, for many of Nathan's young American fans, the most obvious places to see him would be Skate America and US Nationals. But the all-event tickets for US Nationals have just come out and what's this? The cheapest tickets are $475, because they won't open up the "cheap seats" at the top. $475. For US Nationals. In a non-Olympic year. The USFS has to be joking, but sadly, they're not.
(Worst, is that I'll probably still pay it, because practice passes generally only come with all-event tickets.)
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What is making me most uncomfortable reading the proposals is the number that are directly targeted at Alina - and none of this "oh no, it's not targeted at all" crap, we know it is, Alina was literally the only Senior lady doing fully-backloaded programs this season and what's this, suddenly there are proposals - from Canada and Japan but of course they just "mean well" :sarcasm: - to ban full backloading; Alina was the Olympic champion at 15 and suddenly there is an "URGENT!" proposal to raise the Senior age to 17.
I'm sorry, but this feels like a bunch of adults in organisations bullying a teenager because she happened to be the best, and it's not acceptable.
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Yes, and taking a road trip in a country like the US would be more likely if the tickets were even 50-100 dollars lower. As it stands, fans can't go to the international competitions, but even the local ones are usually reserved for the older, more financially stable audiences.
I do wonder how this would change the perception of FS within it's audience when the audience is expanded. There are still age-old notions of what works, and that would probably change.
