Is speed skating a bigger money maker for ISU?

For those who are familiar with speed skating, do you feel it is more popular than figure skating?
I wonder which one makes the most profit. Both are governed by ISU.
Also, why are ISU presidents always former speed skaters? Why can't we have Dick Button as the president of ISU? He would cleanse ISU of bias judges by passing the "permanent bann" rule!

NymphyNymphy said:

For those who are familiar with speed skating, do you feel it is more popular than figure skating?
I wonder which one makes the most profit. Both are governed by ISU.
Also, why are ISU presidents always former speed skaters? Why can't we have Dick Button as the president of ISU? He would cleanse ISU of bias judges by passing the "permanent bann" rule!

Click to expand...

I don't know about now, but in the past when figure skating was more popular and profitable, this was a big issue. The figure skating side was always grumbling about having to divert revenue earned by figure skating to prop up speed skating.

There was a big controversy in 1994 when the speed skating side pulled a fast one and rushed the name of Ottavio Cinquanta into nomination for ISU president. This prevented the figure skating side from nominating their choice, Sonia Bianchetti, because you can't have two people running for ISU president from the same country.

This was the issue that drove the push for the World Skating Federation in 2003, which sought to create a separate body in competition with the ISU for just figure skating. It didn't work out, and WSF agitators such as Bianchetti and Ron Pfenning were kicked out of the ISU.

Here is an article from the ISU web site about the new contract that they signed recently with a sports marketing company. No details are given, but presumably what the marketing company does is try to line up corporate sponsors for various speed skating competitions.

https://www.isu.org/inside-speed-sk...for-isu-speed-skating-events?templateParam=15

It might be the friends I've had throughout my life but......I have never had a friend ask me about speed skating. Even my "Non Skating" friends would ask about Michelle Kwan. The only Speed Skater I can name off the top of my head is Dan Jansen and that's because he was so good lookin'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWYRH5jnQBo

Ahem...my pretend Olympic boyfriend...Apolo Anton Ohno...I'm pretty sure he could push a truck uphill with those thighs....

Anyway short track is very popular in Korea, long track very popular in Holland...I guess it depends where you live. I personally don't know of any speed skating activities around here but there are plenty of figure skating/hockey rinks.

*looks at her flag*
I’m kind of pretty sure that right here, speed skating makes a lot more money. A *lot*.

As moonvine says: it depends on the country. In The Netherlands, and Winnie_20 also mentioned it, I'm sure both long track and shorttrack speed skating are very profitable, Figure Skating is not. But then, it's not very popular either, while speed skating is. That's where the results are too in terms of European championships, World championships and Olympic Gemes are concerned. The national Skating Body is also more in favour of the speed skaters, they get granted a lot more funds (but then they also bring in more money). It's a bit of a vicious circle: if more funds would go into FS, there may be more talent that will come to fruition and it would become more popular, but more funds will only be available if the discipline would be more popular. However, I suspect in Japan it will be very different! Regarding the ISU as a whole I really wouldn't know which is more popular, although I suspect it would be Figure Skating as speed skating is only popular in relatively few countries. Especially long track which has some pretty boring numbers (the 10 km for example), although the shorter ones can be spectacular.

I saw a partly translated Japanese article with charts about Japanese fed income (although I don't remember if it gave raw numbers) that showed that like 90% of income comes from figure skating - and it's not like Japan is completely uninterested in speed skating either (whereas spending was about 50/50). I imagine that in countries that have FS audience it's much more profitable due to broadcasting rights and ticket sales for occasional events. I don't imagine speed skating being much of a in-arena spectator sport - except the Netherlands, of course!

Very true.

ISU changed speed skating lots, adding the mass start, points race, team pursuit and relay disciplines to long track/big oval speed skating. These are certainly more spectacular to watch than endless rounds of 5K or 10K distance skating. Short track speed skating has always been exciting, thrilling even because it can get quite physical with all the pushing, shoving, cutting etc. and DQ's provide for unexpected results.

Global representation of competitors and an even distribution of medal chances matter to the IOC for keeping a sports discipline on the Olympic Games.
Figure skating is dominated by a handful of nations, as is speed skating. FS is a key event in Winter Olympic Games, with the women's medal being one of the most coveted medals of all when it comes to national prestige.
But I can imagine people finding FS old fashioned and in need of change, but the same can be said about the sailing events or the equestrian events in Summer Olympic Games for example.

The ISU financial reports give no clue as to what discipline's income and expenses: https://www.isu.org/inside-isu/fina...ort-report-of-the-statutory-auditor-2017/file
The report shows the dependence on broadcasting and advertising rights for income and FS generates more advertising income than SS and ST combined.

Also worth noting are ISU's dependence on OG revenues, its changing focus on "digital media opportunities" and Asian markets, and ISU being worried over Europe's markets.
Finally, the governing body is glad it has good Event Coordinators amongst its ranks, and us fans should be glad too for these event coordinators bring local OC and sponsors together.

In terms of tweets and Facebook, figure skating was the number one sport worldwide at the Olympics, so you would hope the ISU would make more money from it. However short track wasn't far behind it, at least in South Korea, plus it's clear from the figures https://www.adweek.com/digital/figu...inter-olympic-games-talk-on-twitter-facebook/ that the ISU's sports dominate the Olympics - let's hope that they realise that.

As everyone says it's down to individual sports and I would have guessed USA, Russia and Japan for figure skating would add up to more than long track in the Netherlands and short track in Korea, everywhere else is probably even stevens. Also Eurosport coverage of speed skating is very patchy indeed, if they're covering an event i.e. championship you'll often get days where they're not covering it at all, whereas figure skating while nowhere near as good as it used to be is still a lot better. That's probably pretty indicative of where they get the bulk of their money from i.e. wider coverage of figure skating world-wide should add up to more money.