I may start my own thread in the future, but I think I'll just stick this post here for now. TBH, I hate creating my own threads and I could see myself just copying and pasting this into more threads.
I've been aiming to create a comprehensive list of ideas for how I'd fix figure skating but I've been finding that to be really hard to do and I'd like to move onto other things. So I'm going to just write on what I feel like is my most important idea: I believe it's time to move away from the Grand Prix and towards multiple single elimination tournaments a year.
To start with, I updated
my post on ratings for the Grand Prix. The decline seemed to be steeper in the middle events.
There's a few problems with the Grand Prix.
1. It takes place during the most absolutely jam packed sports months of the year in the US. I think it's mistaken to think that figure skating doesn't really have to compete with those sports for eyeballs. I question having the Grand Prix begin with Skate America while it's in the middle of the NFL season, during the very end of MLB, right after the NHL and NBA start their seasons. And then there's the election season which can distract too. Then the GPF happens around the college football conference championship games.
2. I like how the Grand Prix is setup to find those top skaters who are able to execute with some manner of consistency. And I love the Grand Final which brings together the elite 6 skaters and teams in each discipline. The Grand Prix Final is almost always my favorite event of the year and I often get a little bored of the rest of the season(only way to avoid that is to actually not watch the Grand Prix).
But I actually don't think the Grand Prix is doing the job it needs to be doing with regards to grabbing attention. I find it a odd how there practically zero extra attention given to the Grand Prix Final over just the regular Grand Prix events. There's usually negligible difference in ratings and there's rarely any difference in media coverage.
I think the Grand Prix is a bit too long and a bit confusing for a casual watcher. From a narrative perspective, I think it would be easier to hype up and promote events like a GPF if you can definitively say at the qualifying events that the medal winners(or top 4 or whatever) will be at the Final.
While I love the elite nature and the intensity of the GPF, I think it's terrible for getting media coverage. The media has a tendency to want to focus on events where there will be a local who is competitive. With the GPF, there's no guarantee at all that there will even be a local involved. This is not about any individual season but for the ability for a media network to plan ahead year-over-year.
3. While I like the Grand Prix in isolation, I feel like the intensity of it and how it flows into the Nationals sets the whole season up to be a repetitive grind. As long as there's a Grand Prix, figure skating will coalesce around there being One True Ruleset where the skaters grind the same programs for the entire year. The Grand Prix gets in the way of putting on new interesting competitive formats.
4. There is no fundamental differentiation between the GPF and Worlds. The same top skaters are skating the same programs just 4 months later and the only reason the latter is most prestigious is that it has a longer history, takes place later, and has more national representation so thus more media coverage. This lack of differentiation bugs me to no end and it baffles me that it seems few have a problem with this.
I'm going to describe at a high level how I'd like to see the figure skating season scheduled. But my most important point is something I've already mention: that new and interesting competitive formats are impossible to pursue until the Grand Prix is replaced. Everything flows from that point and everything after that is in flux and up for negotiation.
Also, I'm focused on how to make the figure skating season more meaningful for those who are not top skaters AND how to maximize attention for skaters who are at the top. In the process I feel like I've created a system that would really work much better for skaters who are near the top for their region but not the world AND skaters from deep federations who just miss out on being able to skate at Worlds. The three concepts I've held in my head while creating this system are Regionalism, Parity, and Novel Repetition. The later means to provide new rewarding experiences in a scheduled manner.
Here is how I'd like to see figure skating scheduled:
1. Instead of a single Grand Prix, there would be at least 3 "tournaments" a year with a final in each of the major timezone areas(America, Europe, Asia).
2. Each tournament would have some sort of competitive differentiator and/or ruleset changes that sets it apart from the other tournaments. It should be kind of like how the different surfaces change how tennis is played. I may make a seperate post about this topic. I would have the host conferences(see next bullet point) propose these changes but they would have to be affirmed by the rest of the ISU.
3. Qualifiers for the tournament final would take place in regional conferences. These could be called conference championships for lack of a better term. How many conferences there are could be made flexible. A conference setup I like the most is US+Canada, Russia, Europe, Asia. But I could see the US and Canada be separated or Russia lumped back in with Europe. Japan could potentially be seperate from the rest of Asia.
4. The qualifiers would take place around the same time period and the final would take place 2 weeks after the qualifiers.
5. Who skates at the qualifiers would be completely up to the conferences. There could be qualifiers for the conference championships. It's important that it be extremely rare for someone likely medal at a conference championship to have to go that route.
6. The media within a conference area would focus on that conference but could potentially show a highlight or two from the other conference qualifiers while their qualifier is taking place.
7. There could/should be a recap hype show of the qualifiers the week between the qualifiers and finals.
8. Compared to the GPF, the number of qualifiers should be greatly expanded. Some may find it awkward with the ice resurfacings, but I like the Russian nationals style of having 3 groups qualify. So 18 singles, 12 pairs, and 15 dance teams.
9. There are two different ways I feel like the spots for the final could be allocated to the conferences. This is something that would be hashed out through negotiations long after it's decided to move in this direction.
9.1. Every conference medal winner earn a spot at the final(except for perhaps the bronze pairs teams) and either an ISU committee or a conference committee decide who else to send. It's important that it be rare that someone who could potentially medal at the final be left out of the final because of a bad skate.
9.2. Allocate spots based off of the performance per discipline of that conference in previous events. Would kind of be like how spots are allocated for countries at World. The benefit of this is that it would really allow conferences to be flexible. Hard(but not impossible) to see how say Japan could be it's own conference without allocating spots like this.
10. A big question is what to do with skaters from countries that don't fit into one of the big conferences. It would probably be best to just let them compete in a conference in a somewhat relevant timezone area. There really isn't a lot of high level talent outside of the conferences I imagined(NA,EU,RU,Asia) for there to be a big catch-all conference.
11. There ought to be regional championships for the time-zone areas that are not part of the major conferences. I like the idea of there being a championship for Latin America, South East Asia, MENA to India. Perhaps it could be Latin America, MENA to India, and Asian Division 2 to make it more inclusive. And if there's an Asian Division 2 perhaps there could be a Europe Division 2.
12. It's not worth saying anything too definitive on the 4CC and Euros right now. They could keep existing or they could essentially be supplanted by the tournament scheme I've came up with above. Personally, I think an Asian competition and then a North American competition is more interesting then having them put together like in the 4CC. Russia could easily compete in one of the conference championships with the rest of the european skaters and that be called the classical european championships. I don't really care one way or the other.
13. The only definitive thing I want to say about Worlds itself is that it needs to be sufficiently differentiated from the tournaments. There are many different ways to do that. My preference is for Worlds to be a culmination of the tournaments where each of the three tournament differentiators/rulesets are represented and the winner is the one who does the best among all rulesets. But that would mean 3 programs which I could see other see as impractical. I have a few different ways to resolve this but it would depend on how the tournaments are organized and it would take a wall of text to go through it all. Overall, I find it less important to think about than just focusing on the tournaments first. Like today, Worlds should have much broader representation than the tournament finals.
14. Juniors could have their own similar tournaments but probably not as many.
I think there a slew of benefits for moving figure skating in this direction but I find it hard to describe them all. So I'm going to think up of various interest groups and give my top pitches for them. But the benefits between groups will overlap a lot and I'm not going to repeat the same points over and over.
For the ISU, this would increase the amount of events they control that people would be willing to pay money to see. They're at 10-ish with the current schedule(GPx6,GPF,EU,4CC,W). Here it would be at least 16(4 Conferences x 3 Tournaments, 3 Tournament Finals, Worlds) with potentially room for more. (I think the ISU may get their money from media rights instead of event gates but big events people will pay to watch is still a good metric). Also, having the Russians as their own separate conference would make it easier to reintegrate them and to monetize the fan base in Russia.
For the federations, they will likely have a bit more power to pursue the rule changes they feel would work better for the kind of skating that develops in their countries and would appeal to the audience in their countries. I say a bit because it would have to be affirmed by the entire ISU but there will be more room to maneuver with a ruleset for each tournament.
For the broadcasters, with these tournaments instead of the Grand Prix they will have a much simpler story to tell. With this way of organizing skating competitions there will be a much greater chance for a local to cheer on at all major competitions. Every year in every major timezone area there will be an event with the top skaters and the broadcasters in those areas can help set the scheduling to maximize the audience. I'd like to see the local broadcasters give their input on how figure skating events are put on to the local federations who can propose changes. And it could be possible for the local broadcasters to work with the ISU on scheduling the tournaments for times of the year that the broadcasters could give them the most attention.
For the sponsors, I think regional competitions repeated throughout a year will appeal to many sponsors. The audience for these competitions would be better defined and the repetition throughout the year would be more useful for creating a lasting impression. There are plenty of brands that just want to appeal to specific countries or regions. IMO, the current figure skating season is very inconsistent with regard to relevancy. From a branding perspective, I feel like a few events every other month would work better than the current schedule where there's a a long Grand Prix and then a few one off events separated by various weeks. I also think the schedule I've created would allow the figure skating season to be a bit longer(or even year round) which would allow figure skating to be more relevant throughout the year.
For the fans, figure skating will no longer be organized around creating a couple programs a year and grinding them out where the only novelty is who is at the event. More programs will be introduced(or reused from the past) throughout the season. Events will be less interchangeable with each other. Thus, they will have more interesting things to talk about. Going to an event where the absolute best skate against one another will become more accessible as there's guaranteed to be one event like that in every timezone area(currently there are only 2 events like that and so one timezone area usually gets left out).
For the very top skaters, if you truly are one of the best then this way of organizing competitions should garner you more attention and make your more relevant to sponsors. The best going up against one another relatively frequently in novel situations is how Tennis, Golf, F1, etc raise the profiles of their athletes and figure skating should go that direction too. The conferences provide a safety net where if you're no longer one of the top in the world then you can still receive recognition for being near the top of a region. Also, there should be extra selected spots so if you have a bad skate at one of the conference competitions then you should still be able to make it to the finals.
For skaters from countries with relatively deep talent pools, you would be guaranteed to have longer skating seasons. Skaters from countries with deep talent pools often have competitive seasons with practically last just 3 months. This makes nationals super stressful. A bad skate at nationals can mean waiting 9 months for any sort of redemption skate. I think this can lead to depression and mental issues because the wait is too long.
On that same track, I think this way of organizing skating would help some who struggle with mental health. There's a weird(and unnecessary IMO) brutality to the way figure skating is currently organized that I've tried to undo. My way of organizing figure skating is less exclusionary but still exciting. There's less of a gap between meaningful competitions which allows for looking forward to a redemption skate. More people would receive recognition though regional competitions and potentially through the few different rulesets.
For non-Russian European skaters, you will have multiple pan-European competitions a year without the Russians. For the top skaters, this creates space for receiving recognition and thus potential sponsorships. There are a lot of European skaters that have the opposite problem of skaters from federations with deep talent pools. The later often get to go to the Grand Prix but miss out on the 2nd half of the season. The former get to go to Euros/Worlds but miss out of the Grand Prix(Challenger Series hardly garners any attention). For many European skaters, this new way of organizing figure skating would mean they would skate at more high profile events over a longer period of time. I also kind of think that European skating is poorly organized and that European skating might develop more with the top young european skaters going up against each other more often at the junior level.
For skaters from countries where figure skating is not well developed, you will have an opportunity to compete with others with a similar background. Competitions are interesting because of the contexts they take place in. Having competitions between skaters from a similar region AND skill level can lead to interesting competitions. I think there are interesting competitions to be made out of the skaters from Latin America, MENA to India, and Southeast Asia(see
figure skating at the SEA Games). Or other divisions like Latin America, MENA to India, Asia Division 2, Europe Division 2 could be used. In Latin America, there are a lot of fans of aesthetic sports in general that I think should be catered to.
For the coaches, what's good for your skaters should be good for you. The coaches who have a multi-national group of skaters and who like to show up to every event may hate overlapping events. But those overlapping events are necessary to have denser skating careers. A lot of the figure skating season is skaters waiting for other skaters to skate... not at the same event but at different events. I want to get rid of that so skaters can do more during a season.
And with that I'm going to end this post. The reason I wrote this post is that I feel when people discuss the decline of figure skating's popularity that that look too much towards judging and the scoring system. I think it's best to first look at how to create and best schedule novel and meaningful competitions.
I would make the SP a bit longer and add a 3 or more jump series (could be euler, could be + 2a etc could be 4 or 5 smaller jumps too) and I would keep the same length in the LP but remove one or two jumping passes. I would require a choreo seq that is more about moves in the fields. I would require a choreo seq that is more about interpretation of the music like a rhythmic, characteristic choreo seq. I would add a specific step sequence (one foot, circular, serpentine, diagonal or straight line) to make sure skaters keep developing their blade work, which is the essence of figure skating. So there are ways to achieve a better balance, but there needs to be a will from the people on top. I am not sure many people over there would agree with my suggestion to nix even more jumping passes 
