AWSA membership is now well under 10,000. On the west coast, tournament attendance is at an all-time low. In the last 10 years the number of tournaments has also plummeted in the west. These facts are indisputable. Competitive water skiing is in the worst condition of my lifetime.
BallOfSpray’s Google Analytics data paints a different picture. Before I state the numbers you have to understand that BallOfSpray is barely a grain of sand on the beach that is the internet. The only people that read this site are interested in water skiing enough to search the internet to find a web site about it. The casual water skier does not spend a lot of time on the internet reading the latest news and goings on.
In the last month BallOfSpray was visited by over 50,000 unique visitors*. In the last year nearly 6 million pages have been viewed. California accounts for almost 9% of the unique visitors in the US even though the state is in severe drought. Texas accounts for 7% and then Florida, Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan, and Washington all account for 4% to 5%. Water Ski Mag subscription data shows a similar distribution.
What does any of this mean? If BallOfSpray has at least 5 times as much readership as the AWSA has membership how do you interpret that? I believe this shows that water skiing is much healthier than competitive water skiing.
Additional BallOfSpray info: Traffic in terms of page views has been plus or minus a few percent for about 4 years. Over the last 12 months traffic is up 3.66 % over the previous 12 months. I assume weather is responsible more than half of that variance. Most surprising for me is that new members are joining the forum at a much higher rate than previous years (I have not calculated a metric).
*Unique Visitors is not a perfect metric but it is an accepted standard. I cross check all my stats with server statistics reports and the forum software reports. No matter how I rehash the data => the Google data always seems to make sense.
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Get in some events and then come to the Cash Prize. That format will not save the sport but I believe it is a step in the right direction.
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Connelly ☆DBSkis ☆Denali ☆Goode ☆GiveGo ☆MasterCraft ☆ Masterline
Performance Ski and Surf ☆ Reflex ☆ Radar ☆ Rodics OffCourse ☆ S Lines ☆ Stokes ☆
But at my level ( m3 PB [email protected] in a tournament), I know I cant be competitive. I'm not about travel to other sites, pay $60 for maybe 8 passes to be assured last place. It really isn't fun for me.
If read over an over about on this site about holding grass roots or different class tourneys , but they just aren't happening.
USA Waterski is insane? "It's often said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result"
1. team competiton
2. unique events (remember 38 off spin it to win it) that was cool
3. Open qualification- the first round of qualification takes place at your local gym. with local judges. Everything is posted on line. You see where you stack up against the whole world. You can do your open workout any time you want during the test window.
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Connelly ☆DBSkis ☆Denali ☆Goode ☆GiveGo ☆MasterCraft ☆ Masterline
Performance Ski and Surf ☆ Reflex ☆ Radar ☆ Rodics OffCourse ☆ S Lines ☆ Stokes ☆
From a competitive aspect I believe the demise of the water ski club has really hurt us. 25+ years ago when I started I was able to afford it as a 19 year old. $480/yr for club dues including boat payments. A $400 Connelly that I rode for 2 years. Also the time on water vs. down time wasn't much of an issue b/c you could find a ping pong or pool game in the boat house any time you wanted. Same thing at tournaments. Horseshoes, basketball, and beach volleyball games were always going on when you weren't skiing. Tourneys were 3 rd/3 ev over 2 days so as a slalomer I had plenty of time to fill. I don't remember it being an issue.
Now a lot of skiers have either dug their own lakes or moved into water ski communities. The cost of entry into these is a lot more than what a normal 20 yoa can handle. Nothing is really surprising to me here...
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Connelly ☆DBSkis ☆Denali ☆Goode ☆GiveGo ☆MasterCraft ☆ Masterline
Performance Ski and Surf ☆ Reflex ☆ Radar ☆ Rodics OffCourse ☆ S Lines ☆ Stokes ☆
I think the picture painted above by Horton is that skiing is healthy, but tournament skiing is anemic. Shoot, here in Utah, we are in a drought, and yet here we are with another private lake opening up soon and our club wait list seems to be as long as it's ever been.
Is it possible that our sport can be healthy without a healthy tournament market? I think so. Snowmobiling in the west is as popular and healthy as it has ever been, however, I don't think it's related at all to the hill climb circuit. 99/100 snowmobilers I meet have never "competed" in snowmobiling. They are, nevertheless, addicted as can be, and not leaving the sport any time soon even in spite of the fact that the mfgs want to charg $15k for a sled these days. The same thing goes for mountain biking. I only even know one biker who competes, and I know a lot of mountain bikers who spend a lot of money on bikes and spend a lot of time on their bike.
I guess my question is kind of this: Why do you guys think it's so important to have this healthy vibrant tournament scene? Lots of sports do just fine and grow very well even without the organized events and everybody and their dog attending them...right?
Even if you start the dollar calculator, at the point where somebody has just got to stand on a mono ski, how many dollars later are they going to be at a standard where they could be competing at a reasonable level.
Your average Joe is working hard to cover every day costs for his family, on top of that the kids want all the latest gizmo's and clothing to keep up with their peers, so that they remain kewl.
For me the only way you are going to increase the entry levels into the sport would be cable setups, only one problem there, the young dudes want to wakeboard at the cable parks not participate in the discipline of slalom water skiing
Looking Forward To Getting On The Water, It Has Been A Bleak Winter
Looking Forward To Getting On The Water, It Has Been A Bleak Winter
Without the tournament part of the sport there are no standards. There would be no speed control. There would be no rules. There would be no standard anything. The rules and standards provide the yardstick we all use to measure our success or failure. It really is an individual sport. I ski against me but I want to know the balls are the right size and in the right place. I also want to know the boat is going the right speed.
If there is a good jr scene on your area tournaments are a fantastic experience for kids.
Competition drives skiers to look for an advantage and that drives ski sales. Ski sales drives product development and that means we get better gear. It keeps the ski companies alive.
The tournament scene is a huge social factor
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Connelly ☆DBSkis ☆Denali ☆Goode ☆GiveGo ☆MasterCraft ☆ Masterline
Performance Ski and Surf ☆ Reflex ☆ Radar ☆ Rodics OffCourse ☆ S Lines ☆ Stokes ☆
So my rather long winded take - at least here there are a few people that enjoy skiing, competitively or not.
I skied 2 sets at the swamp on Saturday. On Saturday I got a lot of things off of my "to do" list, and pulled my son and his friend knee boarding, swam from the boat with them, and later pulled my daughter knee-boarding. Went to watch community ed theater that night as my son played in the pit band.
Sunday I skied two sets at the swamp, worked on a consulting project for two hours. Then my daughter learned to wake board and shortly thereafter to wake surf. My wife and I parked the boat on the calm side and drifted in the wind for an hour in the sun listening to music and jumping in the lake when we got too warm.
Grilled out and then played cards with my wife and two kids laughing our butts off.
Nice weekend. Didn't get the plane up in the air and it's been too long. Didn't get to the gym or play any tennis with my daughter. Didn't get to the go kart track with my son or out for hot wings with my son. Didn't work in any barefooting. Didn't fly down to Iowa and see my Mom. Didn't go out to dinner with my wife...but I could have gone to a tournament.
Will hit the skiwatch fall double.
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Connelly ☆DBSkis ☆Denali ☆Goode ☆GiveGo ☆MasterCraft ☆ Masterline
Performance Ski and Surf ☆ Reflex ☆ Radar ☆ Rodics OffCourse ☆ S Lines ☆ Stokes ☆
Now you have whole sub groups that do nothing but Wakeboard, Wakesurf, jetski, etc. One of my old ski buddies is now kite surfing and spends a lot of time and money doing it. Cost of entry into wakeboard or surfing, I mean you could buy a lot on some private ski lakes for what one of those boats sell for and still have money to buy a good used ski boat. It would be very uncomfortable to ski behind a wake or surf boat. Yet the boat manufactures sells are in the multi-millions every year. We did it all with one boat, a glastron for many years. We had a ton of fun with it.
Then you have pontoons, those things are ridiculously expensive and involve nothing but cruising around the lake and drinking. There selling a ton of those things at 75K to 125k range. Your very unlikely to do any kind of water sport behind a pontoon.
Point? is I wonder if you looked at water sports / users as a whole now and compared it to watersports back then if the numbers would be that different.
My interest in skiing had died some but was rejuvenated thanks to the college team. And that was the only time I went to a tournament with any concern of being competitive.
What are the industry numbers on ski sales? How is it that everyone you meet says they have skied/do ski and none of them have any clue that competition skiing even exists? Has the private lake scene killed skiing? Is there a way to get the general skiing public back to competitions? Some of it is that event is not an event anymore. Like @MrJones said, we have nothing going on but the rent between rounds. It doesn't have to cost much. A basketball goal or a volleyball net are pretty easy to set up. Music on a PA? Simple things to make the few people who are showing up happy to stay and hang out. Both my wife, and a couple guys who are waaayyy better than me wives say the same thing, the events are worse than dentist appointments for spectators.
Those are all separate ideas/issues but they have to be addressed