Is it fair if we get the objectively fastest swimmers to go slower so competition is closer?
Note that the advantaged swimmers in middle lanes are really objectively faster: they earn their spot through year long competitions and in-event qualifications. Sure, they will be an odd case or two.
Spectators don’t seem to mind it in rally race car driving, downhill skiing, bobsledding, and other timed events where multiple competitors cannot share the track.
Spectators also don’t seem to mind for diving, gymnastics, figure skating, equestrian and other events which are points defined and competitors are also performing sequentially.
Your first list of sports are all single participant because of safety. Every one of those has a significant risk of injury or death that is unavoidable for the sport and nobody wants to die because the competitor next to you makes a mistake. Spectators would absolutely pay to watch it, however (see MMA, boxing, etc).
The second list are not judged by racing against the clock and therefore pointless to compete simultaneously.
> Your first list of sports are all single participant because of safety.
That’s irrelevant in terms of spectators. Which was the GPs point.
If the spectators can watch solo runs in X then they can watch it in Y.
> The second list are not judged by racing against the clock
I know, I said that already.
> and therefore pointless to compete simultaneously.
There are plenty of point-based competitions which are still competed simultaneously. Like Paralympic races. Darts. Shooting. Dancing competitions. I could list plenty more.
You’re conflating requirements with tradition.
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The real crux of the matter isn’t any arbitrarily defined condition. It’s just what people are conditioned to expect.
Certain sports and even specific competitions within certain sports are structured a certain why because that’s how the organisers have decided. Yeah ticket sales will always be a factor in the decision making, but that doesn’t mean that one format is inherently incompatible with spectators than another format.
The real reason I think swimming is unlikely to ever be swam solo is for the same reasons Paralympic swimming races combine people with different disabilities: there just isn’t enough time in the calendar to fit every swimming event in if everyone swam solo. There are a multitude of different strokes and distances that get competed. It’s not like mountain biking where there’s only one way down the hill.
It's not just a tradition or conditioning out of nothing: it was also feasibility to do so. Eg. you don't get that gymnastics podium seven times over, you only get one. Whereas for bowling and darts, adding one extra spot is not that much extra space. You also completely ignored one reason GP brought up: safety (in rally driving). To save on time, they still usually start with a few minutes delay on the same track.
Where it is feasible to compare side-by-side, we do (swimming, running but not eg. discus throw or high jump), and we award medals on direct result. Where it isn't, we use other independently tracked scores (time, points...).
Rally driving is less to do with safety and more to do with the complexity of adding more cars. There are also plenty of motor racing sports where multiple vehicle are on the track at any one time. But those courses are wider. Why aren’t Rally tracks wider? Well there’s no reason they couldn’t be, but the sport was never intended to operate that way. Whereas other motor sports was intended to be head to head.
But that aside, you’re building a strawman argument here (eg I was never arguing against safety elements) doing so actually agreeing with the point I was making:
Spectators are not the only, or even in many cases, primary, reason that events are structured the way they are.
I agree there are a plethora of other reasons and made that point myself. Safety being just one of them. Feasibility being another. But a lot of the time these problems can be solved by one means or another if event organisers truly wanted ways to run their event differently.
All of those sports are far more niche than sports where the competitors compete directly against each other.
I can give you an example from my own sport: triathlon. It has two broad categories: short and long course. Short course is generally draft legal, and was developed specifically to get into the Olympics. Plenty of people can name the Brownlee brothers, Alex Yee (place Olympic athlete of your own home nation here). Most of my own damn triathlon club have no idea who Lucy Charles-Barclay is (the UK’s best long course triathlete and Ironman and 70.3 world champion)!
> They might not be your field of expertise but calling (for example) Rally as “niche” is insanely off the mark.
I say this as someone who’s uncle was a rally driver: it’s niche.
> Except you didn’t give an example that had anything to do with our conversation.
Half correct: long course is, in theory, a race between people. In practice, it’s a bunch of time trials that sometimes sees a pass, but there’s not much interaction by the time you get to the run.
If we wanted to talk within a sport: cycling has time trialling and road racing. I can tell you the difference in spectator numbers is stark. Like, time trialling has 0 spectators and road racing gets plenty. I love it but it’s really not that interesting to watch compared to road racing.
> I say this as someone who’s uncle was a rally driver: it’s niche.
Funny enough, mine too. That’s a hell of a coincidence for something that’s “niche” ;)
I don’t think you know half as much about this motorsport than you think you do. That or you have a really distorted opinion of what constitutes as “niche”
It’s multimillion dollar industry for starters.
Car manufacturers specifically make models for professional rally circuits.
There’s video games sponsorships and all sorts.
We aren’t talking about Redbull Soapbox racing here. It’s up there with other popular forms of motorsports like NASCAR.
Granted Rally isn’t as big as F1. But F1s success doesn’t automatically make another sport niche either.
Anything that is a multi-million dollar industry is clearly well beyond the realm of “niche”.
Skiing is another massive industry. It’s definitely well beyond what any normal person would define as “niche”.
You have more of an argument with bobsled but it still gets its spectators come the Winter Olympics. So even if it were niche, it’s still evidence to my point regarding spectators of timed events.
> If we wanted to talk within a sport: cycling has time trialling and road racing. I can tell you the difference in spectator numbers is stark. Like, time trialling has 0 spectators and road racing gets plenty. I love it but it’s really not that interesting to watch compared to road racing
I don’t know enough about cycling to comment on TT vs road racing but plenty of other sports have a mixture of TT and head to head racing and still see high numbers of spectators for the TTs. So I suspect there’s other variables at play in cycling to explain the lower turnout. Possibly because spectators are low to begin with and TT are such early stages that people would prefer to see the final stages instead, which are not TTs?
Literally nothing you said stops it being niche. I love triathlon but my sport is niche. I love time trialling, bike manufacturers produce bikes worth up to £20,000 and amateur participants spend hundreds of pounds in a wind tunnel to eke out a few seconds to win their regional championship. It's still incredibly fucking niche.
> It’s multimillion dollar industry for starters.
Most niche hobbies are
> Car manufacturers specifically make models for professional rally circuits.
See above, most niche hobbies have this.
> There’s video games sponsorships and all sorts.
Yeah... so?
> It’s up there with other popular forms of motorsports like NASCAR.
NASCAR is a single country and still outstrips all of rally viewership globally.
> Anything that is a multi-million dollar industry is clearly well beyond the realm of “niche”.
Nope, it's still niche.
> Skiing is another massive industry. It’s definitely well beyond what any normal person would define as “niche”.
Almost nobody takes part in skiing, it's niche.
> it still gets its spectators come the Winter Olympics.
So does track & field but most of those sports are incredibly niche.
> Possibly because spectators are low to begin with and TT are such early stages that people would prefer to see the final stages instead, which are not TTs?
TdF gets high numbers for the TT because it affects the grand tour but TTs on their own get far fewer spectators. The Tour of Britain will have loads of people along the route cheering it. When our region hosted the National 10 Mile TT championship, the only spectators were the families of the competitors and those of us marshalling it.
To be clear: not all TT format sports are niche, I just point out that, in general, head-to-head races get far more viewership than time-trial format sports. In fact, the examples you gave pretty much proved that point. F1 annihilates WRC for viewership. As does NASCAR (even from the UK I know of its cultural impact!)
For some reason, this part of my message didn't get sent
> Almost nobody takes part in skiing, it's niche.
You are aware that there are hundreds of ski resorts? Particularly in Europe. It's a massive pastime in the mountains around here.
In fact it's actually a rather mainstream hobby.
> So does track & field but most of those sports are incredibly niche.
It's on TV multiple times a year in the UK. And I'm talking about the main terrestrial TV channels (of which we only have 5). Not satellite nor cable.
Track and Field athletes are big name celebrities here too. Which does not happen with niche sports.
And that literally every school from infants to secondary school teaches T&F and even devotes an entire day each year for track and field events. They call it "Sports Day".
In fact almost all UK schools, even small village primary schools/kindergartens, also have facilities for T&F.
It's not niche.
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If you want to talk about niche sports, then talk about handball, polo, croquet, shuffleboard, bar billiards, etc. Not stuff that is on TV regularly and taught at every school.
This might be a cultural thing and you just don't see much of these sports where you are. But you could at least research these sports before claiming they're niche.
WRC isn’t niche. Period. It might not be as big as F1 but that doesn’t make it niche. And your arguments about how it’s “niche” only demonstrate that you don’t know what a niche sport is.
I partake in plenty of niche sports. And compared to them, WRC is massive. Some might even say it’s mainstream in comparison to some of the sports I’ve competed in.
Anyway, to the point at hand:
Speedway racing is niche in comparison and that’s head to head. Thus by your logical fallacy, TT should be more popular than head to head. Clearly that’s not a correct deduction of the statistics though.
Ping n Ford races are head to head and they have extremely small view figures.
In fact I could list dozens of obscure sports that are head to head and get smaller viewing figures than other TT events.
All your arguments prove is that some sports are more popular than some other sports for a variety of reasons which are far too broad to distil down to a single variable.
And this is the point I’ve repeatedly made. To argue that one format exist because of one singular reason is overly simplistic to the point of being stupid.
You'd make that trade off? Do you swim competively or how many events do you watch per year?
I mean I'd make the tradeoff that there be no forward passes in the NFL but I'm not a follower of that sport so I'd likely not put that opinion out there because frankly I don't care.
