Little interest in Skate America

[Mathman]

^ Thanks for that great post!

 

[cosmos]

I watched the replay of lady's finals of SA on SBS and noticed the camera captured a hanging flag from the audience with a cartoonish animal smiling in it (looked like a red wolf..dah). It said in Korean "The Wild Dogs are Here." Later, I found out over the internet that Yuna's fans have been calling themselves the Wild Dogs pronounced in Korean "Seung-Nyang-E".

Then, I started to think to myself that the 2008 GPF in Korea might break some sort of ticket sales record.
My only experience going to a sports event in Korea was at the baseball games and I never had so much fun sitting in audience cheering for the players. There is a unique crowd culture that is just amazing to be in especially when it is channeled towards positive direction... It is creative, organized, embracing, Ah... no shyness or what-so-ever by calling themselves with crazy nicknames ...

This morning, I read in the news paper that the TV rating of the SA replay surpassed the rating of the Korean Series (equivalent to the Worlds Series in US). If people here are watching figure skating more than the final match of baseball game, BTW which is facing its Golden Age after the gold medal in the Beijing Olympics... I can only imagine that the GPF will have a heck of an audience.

In the past years, there was no one to share my interest in figure skating in Korea. Now the story is totally different. It is astonishing to experience what Yuna has done for the sports in her own country.

Great posting, jyshin.

There is a big Korean community in Seattle and many Korean students are studying in universities of Washington state. They must have contributed to the record breaking, but I don't think many her fans flied over Pacific Ocean to Everett (maybe a few).

Unfortunately, GPF venue is very small. I am sure the tickets will be sold out very quickly but the number won't be big. That is the problem here in Korea. The infrastructure of skating is not good enough to boost the popularity of FS created by YuNa.

 

[Bennett]

I'm surprised to see all these empty seats. I suppose NHK will be fully packed.

 

[Skatehappy]

I wasn't surprised to see empty seats in the upper tier. But I was surprised to see empty seats where I positively knew that the seats had sold. Some "package" attendees decided to skip certain events Averaging shows that each event had just under 5,000 attendees and that's not counting the practice.

 

[nylynnr]

I'm astonished by some posts here that seem to be taking US Figure Skating to task for no extensive free network or bigtime cable coverage of Skate America and other events. It was not a choice on USFSA's part; no network was interested in televising more than a small portion of Skate America and nationals. The only way they got any coverage at all was by adopting a profit share arrangement and re-working the competition schedules. Icenetwork was devised as a partnership between USFSA and MLB as a way for USFSA to make at least some money, in part to compensate for loss of network contracts.

One of the reasons networks (i.e. ESPN) decided against televising skating was that advertisers simply were not that interested in skating fans. And, if skating fans are indeed as price sensitive as indicated in this thread, then (in terms of their own bottom lines) they were quite correct to be wary. Another reason ESPN discontinued coverage of skating was because of the high volume of complaints and criticisms they received from fans about commentators, viewing times, time allotted to Johnny vs. Evan, etc. A lot of the executives in the sports departments of these networks are youngish former college athletes, perhaps with MBAs, and they're just not very attuned to skating and skating fans.