As Rio Spotlight Dims, Swimming Sponsorships Need to Get Creative
As Rio Spotlight Dims, Swimming Sponsorships Need to Get Creative
Money in the sport of swimming is hard to come by. Here, we dive into the ways by which athletes are able to make a living.
Former Stanford rower and US junior national triathlete Andrew Gyenis, who currently trains at Virginia's Machine Aquatics, examines how swimming can improve its awareness problem outside of Olympic events and how athletes can make the most of their sponsorship opportunities.
On the morning of the final day of the Hong Kong World Cup, I asked five high school swimmers in the locker room after practice if they could name the city where the last stop on the 2016 FINA World Cup was taking place that day.
While all five swimmers are Division I swimming recruits and care a lot about the sport, none of them could name the city. In fact, none of them even knew that there was a FINA World Cup going on at the time. This shouldn't be the case when swimming is at an all-time high right now in terms of the attention it is getting, both domestically and internationally, coming off of a very successful Olympics.
I would argue that there are more household names in the sport than ever before. Swimming has drama (Ryan Lochte), superstars (Michael Phelps), broken barriers (Simone Manuel), comeback stories (Anthony Ervin), rivalries (Phelps and LeClos), and media darlings (Missy Franklin and Katie Ledecky). So why isn't the sport cashing in on an incredible summer, where millions of people around the world were glued to their TVs every night for prime-time coverage of the Rio pool? Why have the heads of the swimming community allowed the sport to quickly slip back into the shadows only to inevitably be unearthed in the late spring of 2020?
Swimming isn't the only sport that struggles with this problem. Gymnastics, volleyball (both beach and indoor), diving, and track and field all share similar popularity cycles with swimming, where the majority of people only care about them for small windows of time every four years. But the athletes don't stop; they don't take a break for three years and nine months. There's the European indoor volleyball league to get ready for, the Diamond League track and field series, and the diving world championships every odd year -- the times when the athletes are actually supposed to make their money.
While the athletes in these smaller sports have the onus to do their own self-promoting, the national federations and international governing bodies need to put their competitors in the best position to succeed financially. The biggest impact I see federations having is when they plan their annual "big events," such as the ones previously listed along with the FINA World Cup series and World Championships for swimming.
After the Olympics, people are burned out from watching sports like swimming and gymnastics (myself included), and the athletes are probably looking to take a break as well. Federations have to be strategic about where they place their annual big events in order to attract the biggest names and the most media attention as possible. The events can't all be packed together, as I believe you want to be generating stories and enthusiasm in your sport throughout the year and Olympic cycle, but that has to be balanced by recognizing that most attention will come in the months leading up to and after the Olympics.
As more money and media attention begins to trickle into our sport, an increasing number of swimmers are extending their careers beyond graduation from college. There are also more competitive swimming companies than in the past with diverse ranges of technologies and specialization that allow for greater competition and sponsorships for athletes. At its core, a sponsorship is a company saying, "Hey, we are going to pay you this amount of money, because we believe doing so will generate additional revenue for our company that is greater than the amount we are paying you."
There are now so many more avenues available for popular swimmers to share their sponsors' products. Consumers want to see what gear the top athletes in their sports are training and competing with, because they want every advantage they can get to have successful competitions themselves.
What was once a slower and more expensive process of publishing ads in magazines or on TV, athletes and companies can now use apps like Instagram and websites like Facebook to immediately share content featuring their products. These posts are better targeted at consumers who are already interested in buying your product in the first place. You probably wouldn't "like" Blueseventy's Facebook page if you didn't have some interest in swimming or triathlon.
Consumers today also have unprecedented access to watch competitions on the internet, which is important because they want to mimic the elite athletes at their own big competitions. If people see Andrew Gyenis crushing the competition in the 100-meter freestyle at the 2017 World Championships in his brand new Blueseventy R10, chances are that they will look into the details of the swimsuit and consider buying it. But you'd never know what suit I was wearing at the 2017 World Championships if you couldn't watch the event (I'm accepting sponsorship offers now, but can't guarantee a win in the 100 free next summer).
Finis, which sponsors Rio 50-meter freestyle champion Anthony Ervin, did a good job with its marketing following Ervin's upset win in the Olympics. By featuring Ervin in most of its recent Instagram posts, Finis took advantage of their smaller brand (as compared to the giants of Speedo and Arena) being in the limelight. Personally, I would've gone even further, and emphasize to the public that "The fastest swimmer in the world wears this suit, so you should too," or "The fastest person in the world trains with this Finis equipment, so you should too."
My hope is that the social media attention and event coverage continue to grow in the sport of swimming, and that athletes and companies work together to come up with creative and innovative ways to promote their products that benefits both parties. The other pathway for athletes to earn money is through prize purses, which I will address in the second part of this piece (although I think all swimmers, with the exception of maybe Katinka Hosszu, make more money off of endorsements than prize purses).
On the morning of the final day of the Hong Kong World Cup, I asked five high school swimmers in the locker room after practice if they could name the city where the last stop on the 2016 FINA World Cup was taking place that day.
While all five swimmers are Division I swimming recruits and care a lot about the sport, none of them could name the city. In fact, none of them even knew that there was a FINA World Cup going on at the time. This shouldn't be the case when swimming is at an all-time high right now in terms of the attention it is getting, both domestically and internationally, coming off of a very successful Olympics.
I would argue that there are more household names in the sport than ever before. Swimming has drama (Ryan Lochte), superstars (Michael Phelps), broken barriers (Simone Manuel), comeback stories (Anthony Ervin), rivalries (Phelps and LeClos), and media darlings (Missy Franklin and Katie Ledecky). So why isn't the sport cashing in on an incredible summer, where millions of people around the world were glued to their TVs every night for prime-time coverage of the Rio pool? Why have the heads of the swimming community allowed the sport to quickly slip back into the shadows only to inevitably be unearthed in the late spring of 2020?
Widespread obstacles
Swimming isn't the only sport that struggles with this problem. Gymnastics, volleyball (both beach and indoor), diving, and track and field all share similar popularity cycles with swimming, where the majority of people only care about them for small windows of time every four years. But the athletes don't stop; they don't take a break for three years and nine months. There's the European indoor volleyball league to get ready for, the Diamond League track and field series, and the diving world championships every odd year -- the times when the athletes are actually supposed to make their money.
While the athletes in these smaller sports have the onus to do their own self-promoting, the national federations and international governing bodies need to put their competitors in the best position to succeed financially. The biggest impact I see federations having is when they plan their annual "big events," such as the ones previously listed along with the FINA World Cup series and World Championships for swimming.
After the Olympics, people are burned out from watching sports like swimming and gymnastics (myself included), and the athletes are probably looking to take a break as well. Federations have to be strategic about where they place their annual big events in order to attract the biggest names and the most media attention as possible. The events can't all be packed together, as I believe you want to be generating stories and enthusiasm in your sport throughout the year and Olympic cycle, but that has to be balanced by recognizing that most attention will come in the months leading up to and after the Olympics.
New avenues
As more money and media attention begins to trickle into our sport, an increasing number of swimmers are extending their careers beyond graduation from college. There are also more competitive swimming companies than in the past with diverse ranges of technologies and specialization that allow for greater competition and sponsorships for athletes. At its core, a sponsorship is a company saying, "Hey, we are going to pay you this amount of money, because we believe doing so will generate additional revenue for our company that is greater than the amount we are paying you."
There are now so many more avenues available for popular swimmers to share their sponsors' products. Consumers want to see what gear the top athletes in their sports are training and competing with, because they want every advantage they can get to have successful competitions themselves.
What was once a slower and more expensive process of publishing ads in magazines or on TV, athletes and companies can now use apps like Instagram and websites like Facebook to immediately share content featuring their products. These posts are better targeted at consumers who are already interested in buying your product in the first place. You probably wouldn't "like" Blueseventy's Facebook page if you didn't have some interest in swimming or triathlon.
Social solutions
Consumers today also have unprecedented access to watch competitions on the internet, which is important because they want to mimic the elite athletes at their own big competitions. If people see Andrew Gyenis crushing the competition in the 100-meter freestyle at the 2017 World Championships in his brand new Blueseventy R10, chances are that they will look into the details of the swimsuit and consider buying it. But you'd never know what suit I was wearing at the 2017 World Championships if you couldn't watch the event (I'm accepting sponsorship offers now, but can't guarantee a win in the 100 free next summer).
Finis, which sponsors Rio 50-meter freestyle champion Anthony Ervin, did a good job with its marketing following Ervin's upset win in the Olympics. By featuring Ervin in most of its recent Instagram posts, Finis took advantage of their smaller brand (as compared to the giants of Speedo and Arena) being in the limelight. Personally, I would've gone even further, and emphasize to the public that "The fastest swimmer in the world wears this suit, so you should too," or "The fastest person in the world trains with this Finis equipment, so you should too."
My hope is that the social media attention and event coverage continue to grow in the sport of swimming, and that athletes and companies work together to come up with creative and innovative ways to promote their products that benefits both parties. The other pathway for athletes to earn money is through prize purses, which I will address in the second part of this piece (although I think all swimmers, with the exception of maybe Katinka Hosszu, make more money off of endorsements than prize purses).