2020 International Swimming League
- Friday, October 16: 4PM-6PM Local Time (10AM-12 noon U.S. Eastern, 11PM-1AM J+1 Japan)
- Saturday, October 17: 8PM-10PM Local Time (2PM-4PM U.S. Eastern, 3AM-5AM J+1 Japan)
- Duna Arena – Budapest, Hungary
- Short Course Meters (SCM) format
- 2020 ISL Scoring Format
- Teams: Energy Standard, Cali Condors, LA Current, NY Breakers
- Full Meet 1 Results (PDF)
After ISL Meet 1, the Cali Condors have one meet win over last year’s defending champions, Energy Standard. The current overall league standings include the 4 teams who have competed so far: Cali Condors, Energy Standard, LA Current, and NY Breakers.
How Standings Work
At each of the 10 regular season meets, teams will score points relative to how they finish in the meet:
- 1st place – 4 points
- 2nd place – 3 points
- 3rd place – 2 points
- 4th place – 1 point
Unlike in individual races, there are no jackpot points, therefore a team won’t gain extra points for winning a match by a huge margin. For example, the Condors won match #1 by 103 points, but they still only scored 4 points in the overall standings.
Jackpot points made a huge difference this year. On paper, Energy Standard seemed to have the strongest roster but multiple wins by Caeleb Dressel, top swims by Lilly King and Molly Hannis in the 50m breast skins race, and extreme point stealing swims by Olivia Smoliga and King widened the Cali Condor’s lead. After day 1, Energy Standard was only behind the Condors by 45 points, but jackpot swims more than doubled that gap.
One change from last year’s ISL is that there are no divisions by continent (that we know of). Last year those continental divisions allowed the top 2 American teams and top 2 European teams to move onto the semifinals. This means that this season the top 8 teams overall, regardless of continent, will move onto the semifinals.
A second change from last year is the addition of 2 new ISL teams, bringing the total number of competing teams to 10.
Current Standings After Meet 1
| 1st Place Finishes | 2nd Place Finishes | 3rd Place Finishes | 4th Place Finishes | Standings Points | |
| Cali Condors | 1 | 4 | |||
| Energy Standard | 1 | 3 | |||
| LA Current | 1 | 2 | |||
| NY Breakers | 1 | 1 | |||
| London Roar | |||||
| Aqua Centurions | |||||
| DC Trident | |||||
| Tokyo Frog Kings | |||||
| Iron | |||||
| Toronto Titans |
How can the Breakers be that bad? All swimmers asked declined their invitation? With the number of swimmers on the world stage, as if they couldn’t get a better roster??
They’re not going to be the only team that struggles. This year, with everyone getting the same base salary, there was essentially no incentive for anyone to join teams that aren’t going to make the final, other than to jump to a home team (Titans/Tokyo). So there was just way less incentive for anybody to switch teams.
I’ve heard from a swimmer or two who, when we thought this was going to be more like ‘free agency’ with different contract offers, had chosen to switch teams for a higher salary, but then after the salaries were all set back to middle, went back to their old teams.
So is the pay essentially base pay + prize money?
The teams will never even approach competitive if this remains the case. Why wouldn’t the good swimmers gravitate to teams where they can help each other win the most prize money possible.
That is wild. 80% of the teams make the semi finals. Makes the ‘regular season’ seem pretty much pointless when every team except NY Breakers and one more get through.
Surely you could do top 6 with the top 2 getting straight through to the final or something at least. Or a top 4 and have semi finals be a 1 on 1 meet instead of 4 teams?
The format of the competition overall makes no sense. I am always glad to watch good swimming, but they really need to think of it as a team sport when scheduling and planning the… Read more »
ISL is just obsessed with “8 to 4 to 2”
and the NY Breakers still stink….
And the NY Breakers still stink…
The teams are wildly unbalanced, especially with corona
Breakers are #4 in the league! Unfortunately it’s only downhill from here. I do not understand their strategy, and Michael really needs to up his game. I’m a fan, I think he’s got great potential, but his ISL performances have been disappointing.
I’m starting to come around on the jackpots, but definitely not in the skins. Litchfield got done dirty there, how can any fan watch that and think it was fair? At least we are getting some variation in skins so it isn’t just Dressel/Sjostrom/Kromowidjojo raking in insane points every meet, but geez.
Breakers are gonna be the one team that won’t perform well. There is always a team like this in any other sport.
New York Knicks.
New York Jets.
New York Breakers.
It is obviously tradition I suppose.