The Breakside 5/26

First, an apology

May 27, 2023

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I am very sorry

To begin, I would like to apologize. My mother (very kindly, I think) brought to my attention that I can come across as simply complaining for the sake of complaining on Twitter without anything meaningful to say. And for that behavior, I’d like to apologize, as I hate contributing to the toxicity in many online discussions.

With that being said, instead of venting incoherently about Ultiworld and USA Ultimate (USAU), I want to provide some meaningful commentary on what I think the priorities of the organizations and the growth of the sport, in general, should be.

I’m taking this seriously, I promise

To establish some credibility, I want to clarify that I take the sport's growth and the work that USAU does very seriously. A couple of weeks ago, I filled out the survey they sent regarding the organization's priorities for growing the game. I will share my answers because I want to be clear about my philosophy of developing the sport.

Much of the survey involved ranking the priorities USAU should focus on at varying lengths of time and for various groups of people. Nearly all of my answers ended in this order:

I think that a youth program that outperforms its counterparts in other sports will lead to all else following behind. I provided the following explanation in the survey regarding my priorities.

If Ultimate wants to accomplish all six of these goals (which it can and should) in my opinion it has to start at the youth level. Youth sports across the country become more pay to play every year, and if Ultimate can become the sport with the lowest cost of access both in time and money, everything else will follow. Subsidizing youth equipment, coaches, field space, leagues, basically everything youth will make it accessible to kids of all backgrounds, and the ease of access will allow them to develop a true love for the game that will bleed into every other aspect of this plan. Long term this will create leaders in the community, funnel resources into the sport locally and across the country, and demand a higher level of organization and competition at the highest level, all while drawing on a truly diverse group of players, bringing values of DEI into the community from the ground up. That's not to say short term programs can't advance these other goals but making a nation wide youth system that is accessible to all is the best long term plan for all of these goals.

I’ll also admit that before learning that USAU subsidizes Ultiworld for DI streaming but not DIII (from an Ultiworld employee), I didn’t think about the financial/marketing aspect of the sport very much. However, since tuning into some DI nationals, viewing the sheer number of games streamed, seeing DIII finals paywalled, and seeing the same commercials for USAU and Ultimate apparel companies over and over, I’ve been getting frustrated over how this is all handled.

The airing of grievances

My main issues with USAU and Ultiworld’s handling of streaming are the following:

All revenue is created from Ultimate players
No efforts are being made to bring in outside revenue sources
Existing USAU incentives create a lack of accessibility for potential new viewers

These all tie together, and I want to be clear and constructive, so please bear with me if I get a little wordy. In the very fiber of my being, I believe a tenet of this sport should be accessibility, with a focus on accessible youth Ultimate programs. However, accessibility can relate to streamed games and tournaments as well. Almost all money in Ultimate comes from the players. Sometimes it feels like one big money laundering scheme. Yet I haven’t seen a lot of effort made to diversify how money is getting into the community to make it more accessible for current and future members of our community. So what is being done now, and what should be done instead?

Well I’ve tried one thing and I’m out of ideas

I think a problem pretty much everyone involved in Ultimate would acknowledge is that the community is too insular to really entice anyone from the outside world to invest/become invested in the sport. Why is that, though? Why does all the money generated by USAU that goes to tournaments and other events only come from players? Are there no other outlets for raising money? Maybe via sponsorship, for example? This lack of money fundamentally limits what kinds of experiences are made available to us, the members and people financing the entirety of Ultimate in the United States. I have never seen or heard of a USAU event being advertised outside of “traditional” Ultimate channels, yet on a slow sports day, I can tune into competitive tag on ESPN. That feels like a failure to me.

I don’t want to belittle the people working hard on Ultimate-related content, but it seems to me we are suffering from a severe lack of creativity and understanding of the modern media landscape and ways to utilize that to our advantage in growing the sport. And I take issue with both the mediums we choose to put our content out towards and what that content actually is.

From a medium standpoint, in my outside opinion, there is a lack of creativity and understanding of the modern media landscape. I sent out a tweet to the niche sports enjoyers Sickos Committee on Twitter that DI Nationals were this weekend. Through their like and response to that tweet, my original tweet has 3,400 views (which is at least 3x more than I’ve ever seen, even on a free livestream). Even if only 1% of people who see that tweet ever check out a stream, that’s still 34 new people who didn’t know about what was happening this weekend. And there are tons of creators, outlets, and other ideas that can be implemented by USAU (because other sports are implementing them) that can have this same effect. Some ideas on marketing and increasing revenue:

Partner with businesses that are outside the community bubble - I know next to nothing about this, but like I mentioned earlier, all the money in the sport circulating exclusively through the community is not sustainable long term. Logos on pro or club jerseys seems extraordinarily feasible as a start, and things like getting snacks for tournaments in exchange for slapping some advertising around the field complex don’t seem insane. Even partnering with local businesses, bars, and restaurants to either show games or have a Chipotle-style fundraiser all seem like ideas worth a shot.
Get on small-medium sized podcasts/sports accounts promoting events like nationals - this would not require a lot of money, and there are tons of creators reaching a consistent audience of a couple hundred or thousand people that could be directed to Ultimate, both in their own communities and streamed games.
Put content where people will see - As silly as it may seem to hardcore/diehards of our community, the Darkside PBS Doc is real publicity. However, it isn’t going to reach people in the 18-34 demographic, which is great for advertisers and USAU membership. Put stuff on Tik Tok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, all of it. There are wiffle ball channels getting a million views on their shorts. We can aim bigger.
Have games be broadcast on Twitch as well as YouTube- let people emote, donate directly to support the stream, and show up on random Twitch users’ suggested pages and drive some views to our game.

And as far as actual content being produced and marketed to a wider audience than just frisbee players, I also am convinced we are not anywhere near creative enough. There is someone with a real following of millions of people in Marques Brownlee (see: MKBHD) who also happens to be an elite Ultimate player. Yet another elite player went to the Olympics in Stacy Gaskill. Right now, people like Brownlee and Gaskill, who have these other (marketable) talents and accomplishments, simply get talked about more on broadcasts and social media. But what if we harnessed their additional reach? Even beyond those two, there are also plenty of people with charisma and reach in their own local communities that can be great ambassadors of the game. Put these people all over the USAU website. Pay them to say whatever you want them to say positively about the sport and their experiences, but just make it engaging and have it reach people in ways beyond USAU and Ultiworld. This community has more resources than just money, and if we tried using them, we might be able to increase the visibility, revenue, and then the experience itself of being in our community.

About The Breakside

The goal of this newsletter is to tackle what I see as a gap in the present coverage of Ultimate as a sport. I hope that this newsletter will provide an outlet for important, yet overlooked people and stories to receive the coverage and perspectives they deserve.

About the Author

My name is Noam Gumerman (he/him), and I am a senior at Brandeis University in Waltham, MA. I am from Chapel Hill, NC, and am currently studying Journalism and American Studies at Brandeis University. I am one of the current captains of Brandeis TRON, our open division team. My claim to fame within the Ultimate community is running the @being_ulti account during the week of the 2022 WUCC tournament. Contact me for discussions, feedback, story suggestions and more on Twitter at @noamgum, or via email at ngumerman@brandeis.edu.

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