Courtesy: Elizabeth Wickham
I’m a swim fan. I enjoy swim meets. I like to cheer for our local high school, club team, and of course college swimmers, too. We stop by meets when we don’t have children swimming and love to watch races.
This isn’t unusual in other sports at all—like football, gymnastics or even golf. There are spectators galore. In swimming, however, it seems like most of the people in the stands are relatives of the swimmers. There are only a handful of people who attend meets as fans from the public. Last week, I went to PAC 12s to cheer on my friends’ kids. Besides a group of Cal former swimmers who attend PAC 12s together every year, there are only a handful of swim fans without direct connections to the athletes. Do other conferences lack swim fans from the general public, too?
With the news that Oregon State cancelled their swim program and other collegiate swim teams being cut recently, I think the promotion of our sport should be a concern. What can we do as swim parents, officials, administrators, coaches and swimmers to help swimming thrive?
How do we get more people interested in watching swim meets? Here are a few ideas to increase the fan base:
ONE
Support local teams. Attend local meets and cheer for the swimmers. Take non-swimming friends along so they can experience the excitement, too. Of course, you’ll have to explain what’s going on because non-swimmers may not understand how many laps are in a 500 or what an IM is.
TWO
More publicity for meets. At the women’s PAC 12s, the people living in Federal Way were not aware that they had Olympians and a number of the world’s greatest swimmers in their town. Most of the community didn’t know there was a swim meet going on at all or that it was open to the public for a small fee. Promoting a meet to the public may spark some interest and get people to watch.
THREE
Welcome the fans. I’ve been to several meets where a swim parent asks “Why are you even here?” It made me feel weird like I shouldn’t want to be watching the sport. No one said that to me at a football game. Not ever.
FOUR
Reach out to alumni. There’s an entire audience of former swimmers and swim parents out there who could be motivated to watch swimming. By promoting events for alumni groups we may see more people in the stands, supporting our teams.
FIVE
More access to viewing. We have to search near and far to find broadcasts of swimming outside of the Olympic years, where swimming tops other Olympic sports for viewers. I believe with more broadcasts and live streaming, we’d gain more swim fans. Then the big question is, how do we get more live coverage and broadcasts?
What ideas do you have to increase interest in swimming?
Elizabeth Wickham volunteered for 14 years on her kids’ club team as board member, fundraiser, newsletter editor and “Mrs. meet manager.” She’s a writer with a bachelor of arts degree in editorial journalism from the University of Washington with a long career in public relations, marketing and advertising. Her stories have appeared in newspapers and magazines including the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Parenting and Ladybug. You can read more parenting tips on her blog.
I have a child that swims club swimming and I went to the ACC last week to watch the college swimmers. I think better concessions (food and beverages) and an announcer that is engaging would of made a huge difference. It was entertaining for me but a non-swimming friend I dragged with me said it was loud and confusing. Even when I explained what was happening she said it lacks the excitement of a “game”. I think some good food and an announcer that we could hear would of made the experience more of a transitional sporting event.
You’ve omitted a (if not the) key consideration, namely what is the product our sport is selling? What are we doing to make meets engaging and fun? Does a 20 minute break after a ninety second relay add anything to the experience? How about when a spectator doesn’t know the score or why there are ‘B’ or ‘C’ heats? If you were to think up a fun competition that involved swimming, would it look like people just going back and forth down the pool?
When it comes to local interest it is all in the hands of the organizers and the more those organizers have incentives to maximize exposure or revenue they do so. When an organizer is only… Read more »
(Just some context for anyone who doesn’t keep up, Greg Earhart is the new executive director of the Collegiate Swimming Coaches Association of America, or CSCAA).
West coast fans don’t support hardly any sports
Footballl can’t keep teams. Bowl games don’t draw
Ucla bball a ghost town, dodgers fan come late/ leave early
This is a left coast phenomenon
Don’t over worry and don’t hold big events there unless attendance doesn’t matter
Master’s swim teams and their coaches make a natural audience for field trips to big time college swimming. Often eye opening for older swimmers to watch college kids and how they swim. While we may not be able to do 15 meters underwater, maybe we can be inspired to work our way up to 2 or three instead of one or zero
Two areas that need to be better addressed:
1) Promotion and publicity
2) the “Fan Experience” (as those marketing pro teams refer to it)
In area 1, it encompasses both better reach-out to the media – and direct promotion to the potential audience.
When meets are planned, does the meet organizing group include a person tasked with the role of being the media representative? Someone needs to fill that role, and they need to develop- a list of potentially interested media organization contacts, then supply them with a press release, information packet (which should have info about the meet, but also info about the sport, the rules, background info about relevant records, past stars,. etc – give… Read more »
Fan experience needs to be a priority for the sport. How can you grow a pro league with no one in the stands and no way to otherwise consume the sport? Also, how do you grow the sport at the young level if parents aren’t willing to sit in the stands? Even where there is demand (eg NCAAs) there’s no tickets available, so there’s limited means to introduce new people to the most exciting crowd experiences.
Online streaming is getting better, but the bar was pretty low to begin with… swim meets are/can be fun! And not just for the athletes and coaches.
Marketing/promotion and self-support are the two biggest factors I see in helping to grow attendance at championship meets.
Coaches/Swimmers need to do a better job of building relationships with the local media in order to help promote the sport. Recent examples of lack of coverage:
1) Indiana Men’s swimming and diving just won their third straight Big Ten title. The Bloomington paper buried the story on page 5 of the sports section. Of concern here is that American Record-holder Ian Finnerty is a Bloomington native, yet still the story was buried on page 5.
2) When Indianapolis hosted the World Junior Championships in 2017, there was ZERO coverage on the Indianapolis television stations and little to no… Read more »
I have been to many college swim dual meets where there is no running score showing on the scoreboards. Would you go to a college basketball game when the score is not kept current?
Here are my thoughts:
Most college coaches/programs can do a MUCH better job at reaching out to their local swim communities. I’ve seen numerous college coaches flat out ignore swimmers in their own backyard and then complain about lack of community support. It is a two way street. I understand it can be exhausting trying to run a college program and try to appease fans, the AD, etc. I also understand that when on the recruiting trail you’ve got to try and get the best swimmers from anywhere, but my suggestion is that IF college programs want local support- they need to play a much bigger role within their LSC’s. I’m not saying recruit every Tom, Dick and Harry out… Read more »