Sailing is not a spectator sport

Discussion in 'Sailboats' started by CT249, Aug 17, 2016.

  1. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

  2. OzFred
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    OzFred Senior Member

    I misspelled Etchells. Clever me.
     
  3. jonas a
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    jonas a Junior Member

    It's nice that they have improved the production, but building up a fan base requires determination and hard work. Although both Olympic- and AC-sailing have some sort of continuity, the problem is that these events only take place every forth year or so.

    Olympic sail classes have very few interesting events between the games and the AC didn't have any events at all between the cups until very recently. The ACWS doesn't really feel like the real thing, as part of the AC fascination is the speculation wrt new technology.

    The World surfing league kind of works because there is only one tour with the very best surfers and the venues are top notch, and the waiting period guarantees that they most of the time have decent conditions,
     
  4. Petros
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    Petros Senior Member

    hard to say what makes popular spectator sports. bowling, golf and stock car racing have very large following.

    I was told by a friend who lives outside of Indianapolis that the Indy500 draws 120,000 to 150,000 spectators. I have never even heard of such large attenance of anything near that much in our whole state.

    all forms of sailing I think are generally seen as a "snob" sport, even the low cost dingy sailing. Yet stock car racing, though even more costly that sailboat racing, appeals to every level of income, especially the working man, the "everyman", and even draws in whole families from the lower and middle income ranges. It is a lot easier to watch a sailboat race, particularly a dingy race, than any automobile race.

    why is sailing seen as a rich persons sport, and stock car racing is not? I have been around both sail races and sailing, and around professional race cars (worked for a factory backed team at one point for 3 years), there is a very different kind of person that gets attracted to each.

    Why is bowling and golf such larage spectator draws, both of them also have very differnt types of spectators. One is lower middle income, the other much more affluent, yet they both draw large numbers of spectators.

    There is something hard to quantify I think, or some other unknown factor affecting both spectators, and participation in sailing sports.
     

  5. jonas a
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    jonas a Junior Member

    Watched some old AC footage during the weekend and found it fairly entertaining. I think that match racing generally works better. Fleet racing is difficult to make TV friendly, because it's hard to react to small wind shifts affecting the whole fleet spread out over a large area. I did also watch some of the 52 series races and although they generally did a decent job, it was difficult to understand how the overtakings happened
     
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