The Spectator Problem(s)
The Spectator Problem(s)
Is it time to change how we organize ultimate tournaments?
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The Spectator Problem: Live Viewership in Ultimate
After attending College Easterns this spring and having a lot of fun, I had a lot to say about it. It left me feeling deeply fulfilled, happy, and motivated to try to attend more live ultimate in my area. I am excited about what being a fan and covering the sport in person could bring. I was so excited that I decided to go to Club Nationals in person.
Whether it’s the 48 teams of players, the fact that it has consistently been in San Diego for several years, or the event's prestige, USAU Club Nationals is the biggest event of the year for the sport in the United States. From the streams, at least, it seems that it is decently well attended by fans and, of course, the eliminated players once the semifinals hit.
However, that is rarely true for other events. Take the World Ultimate Championships (WUC) going on right now, for example. This is one of our sport's highest levels of competition, yet the bleachers at the sports complex in Gold Coast, Australia, have been largely empty when the camera catches it. At Easterns, a few dozen spectators at most weren’t playing or directly related to the players. The best-attended non-nationals club ultimate games I’ve ever seen were at the U.S. Open while I was playing YCCs simultaneously, which is arguably cheating because YCCs is nationals for children.
A few limiting factors exist to increasing in-person spectatorship of club and college ultimate. In my opinion, the major ones are the tournament format, locations where tournaments are held, and what to actually do at a tournament.
The tournament format is limiting because it is so long. It is hard to get someone as excited to spend their entire weekend watching a sport instead of playing it. Pro ultimate has a leg up in this regard. It’s generally a two-hour commitment to get a whole game and the commute if you live near a team.
Speaking of travel, location can be an additional limiting factor. The places with a currently thriving ultimate community, a large population you could market towards, and a field complex willing and able to host a large tournament are often fewer than we’d like. Once again, let’s take WUC and Easterns as examples. WUC is in Gold Coast, Australia, a city with about half a million people living in it.1 It’s over an hour south of Brisbane, a city which has over two million people living there. However, Australia, like the U.S., is a large country, so it is nearly ten hours to Sydney from where the WUC tournament is being played. For Easterns, it’s about an hour and a half of driving from my place to the field complex, over an hour from Charlotte, the nearest Brisbane comp, and over six hours to Atlanta, the nearest Sydney-sized city.
Because of field availability, big-time tournaments are often held in smaller areas. What that means for spectators, though, is that you need a high percentage of the local community to commit a full weekend of their time or people willing to travel as spectators. This means it can be expensive to get to these tournaments if you don’t live near them, and you probably don’t because of where they are.
Finally, the experience for a casual spectator can be improved a lot. I am about to compare club's in-person experience to the pro one. This is a bad comparison for a couple of reasons. It’s an easier time commitment, and the for-profit and nonprofit business incentives are not the same.
However, for-profit business decisions are designed to help draw people in and maximize money spent by fans and received by sponsors in a way that isn’t happening for the nonprofit club scene. There is entertainment between quarters and occasionally some pregame festivities because there is a premium on generating revenue in the pro format, which requires fan attendance.
The formats are obviously much different, but often, the tournament viewing experience in the club or college scene is very pared down. Typically there is some merch and occasionally some food, but that is often it for what you can do when you’re not playing, let alone what you can do if you’re spending a day at a tournament. Lobster Pot, held in Portland, Maine, every year and one of my favorite tournaments to play at, actually has a pretty exciting tournament central. There are lots of different merch options, food, and games, including a vert tester. It’s nothing crazy, but it’s a ton of fun to hang out around for a little while. Now, it is possible that this only happens because it’s a massive tournament that boasts at least five divisions and 70-80 teams most years so they pull in extra bid money to make that happen. However, I do wonder if smaller tournaments did a little community fundraising and promotion as well as a pay-what-you-can entry fee to non-players and what we could bring to tournaments to get people out there who aren’t just players.
It’s also possible this idea is incredibly low on the priority list for tournament directors, local disc organizations, and USAU. Just putting on the tournament is the starting point. Nothing else should take away from making that happen. But with that being said, it’s pretty hard to argue against the idea that more fans at a game makes it more fun to play in and watch. And since we’re all still operating in hypotheticals, indulge me in imagining an ideal tournament playing and viewing experiences for a moment.
Honestly, the most significant limiting factor for me is location. I will give up entire weekends of my life to go watch ultimate if the travel isn’t unbearable. The next biggest factor is whether people I know are going because if I have friends attending or playing, I will travel farther. I am not a normal fan, but travel time and expense are certainly what hold others back too. So, how can local-ish organizations generate more community hype?
Well, showcase games are generally fun ways to pack a sideline with players and fans, but if you don’t want to upend your tournament schedule or only have two days of fields, how can we involve local communities? At a college tournament, maybe the local higher-level club teams could play or host a youth clinic at the end of day one to encourage folks to come out earlier. Often, many higher-level club players are the ones coaching college teams anyway.
It’s really special when a sport or team is able to embed themselves deeply into a community. Surely, there are local musicians, food trucks, charities and aid groups, and other non-traditional sports teams and organizations around many tournaments that could use a tournament as an excuse to bring people together for something.
Many of these ideas come back to my hypothesis that ultimate organizing issues are often community-organizing issues being treated exclusively as sports issues. While I do have mixed feelings about the “ultimate exceptionalism” attitude sometimes prevalent in the community thanks to Spirit of the Game and being self-officiated, I think creating a communal space around the sport where people can engage as fans and as part of a community bigger than themselves is a real way to live up to some of the ideals people put on ultimate.
Fans could also be the ticket to #legitimacy too. Just saying.
But in all seriousness, increasing the amount of community engagement at tournaments from non-players seems like the biggest next step for the growth of the game and community. How that happens and what that leads to would be up to us. I will always advocate for more fun and innovative ideas in sport though. And the idea of a tournament being a whole event that draws a crowd both to see ultimate and to just be together sounds pretty cool you have to admit.
Do you see that happening in any way? How would you draw fans to a tournament near you? Let me know! Once again, stay tuned for more updates regarding nationals and live coverage coming soon. Thank you for reading, and see you in the next one!
About The Breakside
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This newsletter aims to tackle the gap in present coverage of ultimate as a sport. Commentary, analysis, and community are some of the guiding ideals behind the Breakside.
About the Author
My name is Noam Gumerman (he/him). I am from Chapel Hill, NC, and studied Journalism and American Studies at Brandeis University. I am a journalist by trade and have been playing ultimate for over half my life. I love nothing more than combining those two interests. Contact me for discussions, feedback, story suggestions, and more on Twitter (@noamgum) or email (noamgumerman@gmail.com).
All driving distance and population estimates were from a quick Google search or adventure on Google Maps.