Tiger Woods is a (exceptional, way out on the end of the bell curve) professional athlete. While we say skating is a job, it's not really treated as such, while professional athletics is. Are skaters professionals or are they Olympic athletes? If they are professionals, then they need to be doing a lot more events per year than they're doing now. One big contributor to the lack of interest and endorsements is that unlike, say, the PGA tour, we're talking about Nationals, Worlds, Euros/4C, the GPF, two GP events at most per top skater/couple. These events are widely spaced, poorly promoted, and generally involve one or two recognizable names and (especially with Worlds, Euros, and 4C) a bunch of people no one's heard of. Largely because in many cases, the skaters come along, have a decent year or two, and vanish. Michelle Kwan transcended skating mostly because she STAYED. Like Tiger, she was there for ten years or so, at or near the top of her sport. In ladies, when they reach the top by fifteen or sixteen, not only can most average sports viewers not identify with them, they're gone just as fast. Men's is getting more exciting because there are two top skaters and they've been around for a while, at the top. Dance ditto--it's finally getting attention because an American couple have been around long enough to get name recognition and are near the top of the sport.
If skaters want to be paid like professional athletes, the sport has to have stars with longevity and events that people want to watch that are on often enough people remember to see them. Much as I don't like the idea on principle, this would definitely favor the suggestion seen here and elsewhere that the ISU change the limit on number of competitors countries can send. Also, something needs to be done about the ladies side--there's a creep factor to having prepubsecent champions in short skirts with leotard wedgies and adult makeup. To make it more viewer friendly--the rules have to be less esoteric. Though I'm not sure even that would help--professional bull riding has bigger prizes and probably bigger in house audiences and that has a weird-*** scoring system. (Yes, there is in fact a scoring system for bull riding besides the 8-second rule, 50% being the bull's, 50% the rider if there is a ride and not a buckoff. A casual viewer can figure that out. See if a casual viewer can figure out the nutshell version of skating's IJS.)
I'm not saying I want to see skating look more like the PGA, or the PBR, for that matter. Or to be an x-games sport. But if they want to be paid like other pro athletes, they'd have to start running it like other pro organizations and appealing to a market base. They would also have to come down more firmly on the side of being sport, not art.
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