How much interest can Alysa Liu revive in figure skating in the US? | Page 5 | Golden Skate

How much interest can Alysa Liu revive in figure skating in the US?

moonvine said:
Spirts fans who concentrate their fandom on the WNBA, PWHL, and NWSL are a pretty small subset.
Those sports also have easy to understand scoring.
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For a small fandom they can make a lot of move in WNBA, so I'm interested if something can come out of it in figure skating.

moonvine said:
But women’s figure skating has always been the marquee event (in the US, anyway)
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Yeah it's why I made that analogy regarding target markets of Alysa and Ilia.

Women figure skating = marquee event in the US is similar to KPOP girl groups = general public choice in South Korea.

Men figure skating = more niche event with dedicated fans in the US is similar to KPOP boy groups = loyal dedicated fanbase but not general public choice in South Korea.

So yes, specialized empathy would be given to Ilia, that's how fans of young men move.
 
yfan1 said:
I do not find any indication that older women have been 'left behind' in the sport. Carolina Kostner, when she was competing against Russian girls, was respected. Kaori Sakamoto, yet again, respected. Many many fans had nothing but criticism about the younger skaters from Russia, and instead pointed out how skaters like Ashley Wagner and Tuktamysheva - very flawed skaters, to be sure - skated like 'real women' and therefore were worthy of more respect.

Since you bring up Korean celebrities, Yuna Kim still ranks among the top of them, 12 years after retirement. Speaking strictly about singers, her protegee IU, yet another person who spends time at the top of Korean celebrity lists.

So I agree female celebrities are more recognizable and better liked by the general public. It's honestly revealing to see BTS ranking only 5th or 6th on some of those lists. But I don't see how it's translated to women getting 'dropped' in favour of younger athletes in skating when it comes to fandom. Not at all.
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No, they're not dropped by the fandom... they're dropped by the general public. Of course as you said there are exceptions for legends, the IU and Kim Yuna analogy is quite well done and I agree.

So for example South Korea. Of course Yuna Kim is a legend. But then you see the more recent girls. Baby Young You winning Nationals since she was 13. When she gets older and shows no signs of breaking through, ok, who's next. Oh Jia Shin winning Jr World silver in her debut. She's struggling. Oh, now the Korean juniors look promising... maybe them instead of her and her nervous skates.

Japan. Mao Asada retiring. Alright, Satoko Miyahara seems consistent but ugh, her jumps are small. Oh... look at young Marin Honda, the second coming of Mao. Wait, she's more celebrity than competitive skater. Wait, there's Rika Kihira with her 3A! What, she's injured? Kaori Sakamoto is winning things without 3A or quads... boring... when will Mao Shimada be eligible for senior? Wait, we have a young senior with 3A and she is cute! Huzzah, change of the guard! Ami Nakai is like a real life skating idol!

In our loyal fandom bubble, yes, we are all very loyal to the older women. Outside of it, it's still quite fickle. The number of negative sentiment I have read for Kaori alone during this last quad... Maybe not as fickle as KPOP as you can't manufacture younger skaters the way you manufacture younger KPOP girl groups to come out fully formed, but it's there.
 
rabidline said:
When she gets older and shows no signs of breaking through, ok, who's next.
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OK? And how is this different from any normal sport? If someone isn't successful, then of course the general public isn't going to be paying attention anymore. Why would they?

How is it at all similar to girl groups and the General Public pitting them against each other and choosing the 'new' group for no good reason?

It's a good thing that the general public that does this with women's skating. I wish they did so with the men, too.
 
yfan1 said:
OK? And how is this different from any normal sport? If someone isn't successful, then of course the general public isn't going to be paying attention anymore. Why would they?
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Yes, it's why the point was to contrast the general public to boymom fans, who are more loyal to the young men regardless of the quality of their output and can withstand months or years of inactivity or injury period.

yfan1 said:
How is it at all similar to girl groups and the General Public pitting them against each other and choosing the 'new' group for no good reason?
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Uh I think I made you confused with my previous post. Sorry about that. The pitting women against each other comes from the boymom fans, not from the general public (the general public as you said would just move on). It's why boymom fans are for.... men, and not for women. Because they see women and there's a lot of envy and jealousy of the ones that are successful that instead of doggedly support anything they do (the way they do it for young men) they try to undermine the success of women by pitting them against each other. Now that I think about it, the insistence of fans to bring up older women skaters too is a form of this. Like you said, it's about how the younger women will never measure up.

yfan1 said:
It's a good thing that the general public that does this with women's skating. I wish they did so with the men, too.
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Yeah... I mean what happened to Alysa is an eye-opener to me in this regard. Maybe it's because this is the first "real" non COVID Winter Olympics since 2018. Maybe it's because TikTok has been fully enmeshed in the society. But she just... blew up in such a current way, that I never imagined a current figure skater can.

Yes, we have legends, but they all came before this era and period. Even the most recent ones. Everytime there is a debate here over how to drum up interest in skating, how skaters can become stars, it all seemed sort of bleak, as so many things have changed since we have our most recent stars.

I didn't know how a current figure skater can possibly become a bonafide star until I saw Alysa won the gold medal.
 
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rabidline said:
Yes. That's where the "boymom fans" term comes from. The loyalty is based on how the young men needs to be protected from the injustice of the world against them, and how their hard work needs to be appreciated, and how the fans "know better" how to support their careers to become bigger stars. See - the KPOP boy groups. See - the Heated Rivalry guys. See - Timothee Chalamet.
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Hudson is mine... Just so you know. and I know better than anyone else how to support his career :)
 
Arigato said:
Joy personified doesn't have a target market. You just have to be human. As a paper clip is drawn to a magnet, so are people drawn to joy. While it may seem like nothing, it's actually quite something: Alysa.

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Alysa's super-power. in full display. Paralleling Wonder Woman's Truth Lasso, she hog-ties TV interviewers and magically makes them fall in love with her.

(1) "I wrote that?" :) (Alysa on a letter that she supposedly had once written at age thirteen to her prospective older self.)

(2) "I've seen it (some sort of Olympic-gold-medalists-only internet chat group?) , but I haven't opened it yet.-- too busy.":)

(3) Did she almost slip up with her body language when they brought out the gold medal made out of Lucky Charms breakfast cereal bits? For the tiniest instant there, she looked like Nancy Kerrigan being forced to go to Disney World and
be photographed with Mickey Mouse. ;)
 
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Mathman said:
(3) Did she almost slip up with her body language when they brought out the gold medal made out of Lucky Charms breakfast cereal bits? For the tiniest instant there, she looked like Nancy Kerrigan being forced to go to Disney World and be photographed with Mickey Mouse. ;)
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Clearly you don't know she loves Lucky Charms cereal (which is why they brought it out to her ) or what the photo is on her Instagram account ( a bowl of Lucky Charms marshmallows that she hand-picked individually, then photographed it ) and what it means to her. Of course not. It's far easier to turn her into a totally different person she has nothing in common with.

Good job.
 
Arigato said:
Clearly you don't know she loves Lucky Charms cereal (which is why they brought it out to her ) or what the photo is on her Instagram account ( a bowl of Lucky Charms marshmallows that she hand-picked individually, then photographed it ) and what it means to her. Of course not. It's far easier to turn her into a totally different person she has nothing in common with.

Good job.
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What a ridiculous post.

Of course I was aware of the Lucky Charm thing -- if I hadn't been, this video interview made it perfectly clear.

Let me be free to celebrate Alysa's delighftul personality as I see fit. OK? I was tickled by the interview -- that's all.
 
rabidline said:
Uh I think I made you confused with my previous post. Sorry about that. The pitting women against each other comes from the boymom fans, not from the general public (the general public as you said would just move on). It's why boymom fans are for.... men, and not for women.
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You said clearly in your first post, this:

rabidline said:
Alysa and Ilia each have different target markets - they're kind of similar to KPOP girl groups and KPOP boy groups. The girl groups get the more massive share of general public attention and love but get left behind when younger groups rise up,
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I do not feel Alysa (or any woman in this sport) feels like she has a fanbase similar to that of a kpop girl group or feels like her target market is like that of a girl group, or that the people who like women's figure skating are anything like this, due to any of the reasons I've stated.

And I find no value in doing so, while I do find value in equating fanbases of several male skaters to that of 'boy mom' fans. We should expect the fans of those men to behave normally, rather than equating the audience of women skaters to idol fans.

I don't usually see boymom fans caring about girl groups, either, btw. They tend to pit their favorite boy groups against each other (and sometimes even individual members of their favorite groups). The only reason they tend to bring up girl groups is when they want to show who's more popular (but then girl group fans do that too). The bigger fanwars that drag everyone in about boy groups usually come from girl group fans too (BP anyone?).
 
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Had an interesting discussion with someone at a good figure skating store in Germany. She said starting last season, interest in recreational skating has risen markedly and this winter is totally insane. Almost no skates left. Apparently it's a mix between a cold winter and certain famous skaters. So recreational skating in Geemany is in a good place and I bet if they held a Grand Prix in Munich or Hamburg, there would be no empty seats.
The problem is that in Germany we can't seem to produce any top elite skaters apart from maybe in pairs.
 
yfan1 said:
You said clearly in your first post, this:
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Yes, my first post is about contrasting the general public interest on women figure skating/men figure skating in comparison to general public interest on KPOP girl groups/KPOP boy groups. The "getting left behind" part is again by the general public, who do move on to other interests when there are more interesting content. From my experience, while KPOP girl groups/female figure skaters do have their loyal fans.... it's a very different level of intensity from the boymom fans with their young men of choice.

yfan1 said:
I do not feel Alysa (or any woman in this sport) feels like she has a fanbase similar to that of a kpop girl group or feels like her target market is like that of a girl group, or that the people who like women's figure skating are anything like this, due to any of the reasons I've stated.
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Agree to disagree.

yfan1 said:
And I find no value in doing so, while I do find value in equating fanbases of several male skaters to that of 'boy mom' fans. We should expect the fans of those men to behave normally, rather than equating the audience of women skaters to idol fans.
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In an ideal world, they would behave normally. But yes I find certain male skaters having fans that move in a very similar way to boymom fans. The fandom of my favorite skater was like that too (in Japan) before the revelation that like many young men his age, he's dating a beautiful young woman.

yfan1 said:
I don't usually see boymom fans caring about girl groups, either, btw. They tend to pit their favorite boy groups against each other (and sometimes even individual members of their favorite groups). The only reason they tend to bring up girl groups is when they want to show who's more popular (but then girl group fans do that too). The bigger fanwars that drag everyone in about boy groups usually come from girl group fans too (BP anyone?).
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Boymom fans care in the way that's most convenient to their favorite boygroups. They love to score cheap points for feminism for their men without actually seeing the women as human.

So the women are either harmless uwu baby little sisters or cool female friends (when they are less popular than the boy groups - see Le Sserafim and TWICE) or degenerate sluts who whored their way to the top (when they have equal popularity or more as the boy groups - see Blackpink and Newjeans).
 
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This looks good for a resurgence of skating interest in the US, at least for now:

www.starsonice.com

Tour Schedule | Stars on Ice

Purchase Your Stars on Ice Tour Tickets
www.starsonice.com www.starsonice.com

Stars On Ice shows are selling out, and the last tickets for Boston are going for big prices. They are all Resale tickets, starting prices in the $300+ range.

The priciest
Sec 119 • Row Q
Verified Resale Ticket

$988.58

The Providence show is reasonably priced.

There are now 29 scheduled shows, country wide.

Allen, Texas, has two shows in the US.

They were giving away Groupon tickets in recent years.
 
Mathman said:
What a ridiculous post.
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The Kerrigan/Mickey Mouse comparison to Alysa is what was ridiculous. I can't even conceive of Alysa whining like a brat on camera. "waaaaaah, this is so corny. waaaaaah. Mickey Mouse waaaaaah" I was waiting for Nancy to start cryng.

Come on, now. Be serious. :biggrin:
 
I think if she keeps winning, then yes. If she falls off quickly, then likely the interest won't be very permanent. It would just put the new U.S. fans off. Proud, globally relevant countries require a significant, consistent world contender to maintain collective interest. Follow counts don't mean much as many athletes farm enormous numbers and interaction if they put effort into content, but it has rarely translated into serious sport viewership. The attention span and general demographic is completely different. There is minimal correlation between people adding a 1001st member to their following list or watching one of a thousand 5 second clips on their page and making their way to spectate multi-hour tournaments.

Olympics always generate a fleeting interest regardless of what happens. It's definitely possible to convert into long-term nationalistic fans but it isn't guaranteed at all. I do think there's a solid chance Alyssa can do it though especially with Kaori (her only real consistent threat IMO) retiring and Russians likely remaining banned for at least another 2 seasons if not the entire quad.
 
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