The Marketing of Wrestling Compared with Swimming During Olympic Years

[npope]

Like the swallows of Capistrano, the rise of another Olympic year brings with it an inexplicable rise in the profile of the sport of swimming. I would easily classify both swimming and wrestling as secondary sports with trivial followings in most years, but when an Olympic year rolls around we find not only the Olympic swimming events plastered on TV, but even the US team's trials make the TV screen. In a non-Olympic year no "average-Joe" knows any of the swimmers' (or wrestlers') names. But something happens with the marketing machines of each respective sport during an Olympic year that provides swimming with an inexplicable high-profile platform for marketing the sport.

Certainly, swimming is a simpler sport to understand (and that may be the be-all as far as explanations go), but if I were the people in charge of USA wrestling I think I would try to hire-away the people in charge of marketing swimming to do the same for wrestling.

The pulse for interest in wrestling among the broader public is virtually nil and doesn't increase at all during Olympic years. What is swimming doing that wrestling is not? Is the "product" really that different?

[WrestlingRasta]

24 minutes ago, npope said:

Like the swallows of Capistrano, the rise of another Olympic year brings with it an inexplicable rise in the profile of the sport of swimming. I would easily classify both swimming and wrestling as secondary sports with trivial followings in most years, but when an Olympic year rolls around we find not only the Olympic swimming events plastered on TV, but even the US team's trials make the TV screen. In a non-Olympic year no "average-Joe" knows any of the swimmers' (or wrestlers') names. But something happens with the marketing machines of each respective sport during an Olympic year that provides swimming with an inexplicable high-profile platform for marketing the sport.

Certainly, swimming is a simpler sport to understand (and that may be the be-all as far as explanations go), but if I were the people in charge of USA wrestling I think I would try to hire-away the people in charge of marketing swimming to do the same for wrestling.

The pulse for interest in wrestling among the broader public is virtually nil and doesn't increase at all during Olympic years. What is swimming doing that wrestling is not? Is the "product" really that different?

This is it, pure and simple, and the greatest marketing team in the world can do nothing about this simple truth.  Its a race, it requires a very short attention span, it requires absolutely no understanding of the technical aspects of the sport, and from a fan perspective, there are no rules to understand short of not taking off too early, stay in your lane, and touch the wall.   Races are exhilarating.  

[ionel]

1 hour ago, npope said:

 What is swimming doing that wrestling is not? 

 

1 hour ago, WrestlingRasta said:

  Its a race, it requires a very short attention span, it requires absolutely no understanding of the technical aspects of the sport, and from a fan perspective, there are no rules to understand short of not taking off too early, stay in your lane, and touch the wall.   

If only we had synchronized wrestling maybe that would pull us over the hump.  

[BAC]

2 hours ago, WrestlingRasta said:

This is it, pure and simple, and the greatest marketing team in the world can do nothing about this simple truth.  Its a race, it requires a very short attention span, it requires absolutely no understanding of the technical aspects of the sport, and from a fan perspective, there are no rules to understand short of not taking off too early, stay in your lane, and touch the wall.   Races are exhilarating.  

That's small part of it but not the main thing.

I mean sure, a race to the finish line has an ease of simplicity to it.  But if that were enough to draw a crowd, people would be lining up at swim meets around the country to watch the finish line.  They don't.  Same with track, another race to the finish line (except on land) -- immensely popular in Olympic years, but which no one in their right mind would watch voluntarily outside of an Olympic broadcast. 

The real difference is volume.  There's just so dang much of it, which manifests itself in three ways:

1.  There's 35 total swimming events spread out across the whole Olympics.  It spans the entirety of the Games, from start to finish.  (Again, similar to track.) 

2.  Because there's so much, the top individual athletes compete over a period of 7-10 days, not just 1 or 2, capturing eyes for a longer period of time. 

3.  Because the sport's top athletes typically compete in a multitude of events over a period of time, there's the chance for a hoard of medals.

Meanwhile wrestling occupies just a few days of the Olympic program.  The individual athletes are usually on the mat for just 1-2 days.  And given the rarity of dual Greco-freestyle competitors, the max number of medals is one.

Why does that matter so much?

Money. 

Olympic networks and their sponsors are companies paying many tens of millions of dollars to finance the broadcast, and it only pays off if there's a LOT of viewers.  And you only get viewers if people care enough to watch.  But no one cares about most Olympic sports, so the network and their advertisers need to make people care, by hyping up the event and creating heroes.  That means (1) pouring money into the sports that will give them the biggest financial return, and (2) pouring money into the individual athletes who will get them the biggest return. 

Swimming (and track) fares well on both those criteria.  As sports, they have SO many events that they will occupy SO much airtime, so advertisers will invest.  And since the top individual swimmers will be on the screen for over a week, not just a day or two, and have the chance to grab several medals, that makes them ideal heroes to create.  

Wrestling?  Not so much.  It occupies such a small role in the Olympics, and is over in just a few days, that an investment by advertisers just won't yield much return.  Same with its athletes:  no matter how charismatic or fun to watch Jordan Burroughs can be, he's still only on the TV for 1-2 days max, and he's still going to max out at 1 gold medal.  Even if JB is a better athlete than Katie Ledecky, how many containers of Tide are you going to sell with JB as your spokesman if he's only on TV for a 24-hour blip with a lone medal, compared to Ledecky who's on for a week and a half and has amasses a neckful of gold over multiple events?  

Because after all, the question isn't "What is swimming doing that wrestling is not?".  Since the answer to THAT question is "nothing."  Swimming isn't marketing anything.  You haven't heard of Katie Ledecky because of anything USA Swimming did. 

Rather, the REAL question is, why are networks and advertisers choosing to invest in swimming and swimmers, and not wrestling and wrestlers?  And that's the real answer:  volume.  They and their athletes are on TV longer, and their potential for multiple medals creates makes for a more marketable hero.  

Edited June 21 by BAC

[Wrestleknownothing]

24 minutes ago, BAC said:

That's small part of it but not the main thing.

I mean sure, a race to the finish line has an ease of simplicity to it.  But if that were enough to draw a crowd, people would be lining up at swim meets around the country to watch the finish line.   Same with track, another race to the finish line (except on land) -- another sport immensely popular in Olympic years, but which no one in their right mind would watch voluntarily outside of an Olympic broadcast. 

The real difference is volume.  There's just so dang much of it, which manifests itself in three ways:

1.  There's 35 total swimming events spread out across the whole Olympics.  It spans the entirety of the Games, from start to finish.  (Again, similar to track.) 

2.  Because there's so much, the top individual athletes compete over a period of 7-10 days, not just 1 or 2, capturing eyes for a longer period of time. 

3.  Because the sport's top athletes typically compete in a multitude of events over a period of time, there's the chance for a hoard of medals.

Meanwhile wrestling occupies just a few days of the Olympic program.  The individual athletes are usually on the mat for just 1-2 days.  And given the rarity of dual Greco-freestyle competitors, the max number of medals is one.

Why does that matter so much?

Money. 

Networks and their sponsors & advertisers have tremendous financial incentive to create market awareness of the sport and its competitors.  These are companies paying many millions of dollars to finance the broadcast, and it only pays off if there's a LOT of viewers.  And you only get viewers if people care enough to watch.  That means (1) pouring money into the sports that will give them the biggest financial return, and (2) pouring money into the individual athletes who will get them the biggest return. 

Swimming (and track) fares well on both those criteria.  As sports, they have SO many events that they will occupy SO much airtime, so advertisers will invest.  And since the top individual swimmers will be on the screen for over a week, not just a day or two, and have the chance to grab several medals, that makes them ideal heroes to create.  

Wrestling?  Not so much.  It occupies such a small role in the Olympics, and is over in just a few days, that an investment by advertisers just won't yield much return.  Same with its athletes:  no matter how charismatic or fun to watch Jordan Burroughs can be, he's still only on the TV for 1-2 days max, and he's still going to max out at 1 gold medal.  How many containers of Tide are you going to sell with JB as your spokesman if he's only on TV for a blip with a lone medal, compared to Katie Ledecky who's on for a week and a half and has a neckful of gold?  

Because after all, the question isn't "What is swimming doing that wrestling is not?".  Since the answer to THAT question is "nothing."  Swimming isn't marketing anything.  You haven't heard of Katie Ledecky because of anything USA Swimming did. 

So the REAL question is, why are networks and advertisers choosing to invest in swimming and swimmers, and not wrestling and wrestlers?  And that's the real answer:  volume.  They and their athletes are on TV longer, and their potential for multiple medals creates makes for a better hero.  

Let's start by acknowledging that swimming is awesome.

With that out of the way, Amen to your explanation.

I would add that the Olympics broadcasters love stories. And in the US they especially love stories about US athletes. And US athletes dominate swimming unlike any other sport. That combined with all of what you detail above leads to better stories.

Everyone knows about Mark Spitz winning seven golds in one Olympics. Everyone knows about Michael Phelps breaking Spitz's record by winning eight in one Olympics (and 28 total, 23 golds). Everyone knows who Katie Ledecky is as she sneaks up on the most gold medals by a female swimmer, and possibly by any female athlete. 

Those volume based records make for great stories, and stories sell the Olympics.

That, and swimming is awesome.

[ionel]

1 hour ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

Let's start by acknowledging that swimming is awesome.

 

 

That, and swimming is awesome.

We know what you mean. 

[BigRedFan]

58 minutes ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

Let's start by acknowledging that swimming is awesome.

With that out of the way, Amen to your explanation.

I would add that the Olympics broadcasters love stories. And in the US they especially love stories about US athletes. And US athletes dominate swimming unlike any other sport. That combined with all of what you detail above leads to better stories.

Everyone knows about Mark Spitz winning seven golds in one Olympics. Everyone knows about Michael Phelps breaking Spitz's record by winning eight in one Olympics (and 28 total, 23 golds). Everyone knows who Katie Ledecky is as she sneaks up on the most gold medals by a female swimmer, and possibly by any female athlete. 

Those volume based records make for great stories, and stories sell the Olympics.

That, and swimming is awesome.

A quick Google shows that about 3.3 million people in the US swam on a team in 2023.  Compare that to about 300,000 high school boys and girls who wrestle competitively.  The swimming totals represent perhaps 10% of those who swim recreationally, while the wrestling numbers probably represent 99% of those who wrestle in any capacity.

That doesn't explain things like the huge popularity of, say, women's gymnastics, which has ~100,000 competitors, compared to wrestling.  What does explain it?  How about visuals?  I'll leave it at that.

[Jim L]

52 minutes ago, BigRedFan said:

A quick Google shows that about 3.3 million people in the US swam on a team in 2023.  Compare that to about 300,000 high school boys and girls who wrestle competitively.  The swimming totals represent perhaps 10% of those who swim recreationally, while the wrestling numbers probably represent 99% of those who wrestle in any capacity.

That doesn't explain things like the huge popularity of, say, women's gymnastics, which has ~100,000 competitors, compared to wrestling.  What does explain it?  How about visuals?  I'll leave it at that.

Viewers who don't typically watch sports are the target audience for gymnastics (and figure skating, diving, etc) and obviously this is largely female (plus the pervs?)

This is the key demographic for networks to boost their ratings as sports fans are going to be watching the Olympics anyways (and like me they will complain about how much coverage gymnastics gets).

 

[BAC]

1 hour ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

Everyone knows about Mark Spitz winning seven golds in one Olympics. Everyone knows about Michael Phelps breaking Spitz's record by winning eight in one Olympics (and 28 total, 23 golds). Everyone knows who Katie Ledecky is as she sneaks up on the most gold medals by a female swimmer, and possibly by any female athlete. 

I like swimming too, but can I confess that what you wrote here, while 100% true, makes me a bit salty?

If you ask your average American to name the "greatest US Olympian ever," or lets say the top 5 greatest US Olympians, there's a good chance 3 of the 5 would be the swimmers you named.  

But are they really the greatest?  Or are they just counting up the number of medals, which favors swimming because it is the ONLY Olympic sport where you can run up a huge medal count?

Sorry, I'm not convinced Mark Spitz is any better an Olympian than, say, John Smith.  I don't think 9 golds over two Olympics in a sport where the same skill set enables you to compete in a bunch of highly-similar events, is necessarily better than getting gold in 2 different Olympics in the only event in which he could reasonably hope to qualify. 

Lets say hypothetically the IOC made 2 rule changes:  

1.  In swimming, each swimmer on your team can compete only in one event.  If you're good at the breast stroke, you don't get to stack up medals by competing in 2 different breast stroke events plus 2 different relays.  Just one.

2.  In wrestling, they have freestyle, Greco, beach wrestling, Sambo and grappling (5 styles), and to keep the numbers down, each country must have only ONE wrestler competing at a given weight class -- in other words, the same 57kg wrestler for the US also competes in 57kg Greco and 57kg Beach and so on.  

Just like that, you'd see a huge turn in popularity.  No swimmer would win more than one medal, and they'd only be on TV for that one day their event is on.  But wrestlers would be competing over several days in their various activities, and the best could finish with 3 or 4 different medals.  Advertisers would be tripping over each other to sponsor those athletes, because now suddenly they're the best marketing investment.

[BAC]

1 hour ago, BigRedFan said:

A quick Google shows that about 3.3 million people in the US swam on a team in 2023.  Compare that to about 300,000 high school boys and girls who wrestle competitively.  The swimming totals represent perhaps 10% of those who swim recreationally, while the wrestling numbers probably represent 99% of those who wrestle in any capacity.

That doesn't explain things like the huge popularity of, say, women's gymnastics, which has ~100,000 competitors, compared to wrestling.  What does explain it?  How about visuals?  I'll leave it at that.

The higher number of participants in swimming may move the needle slightly vs wrestling, but not all that much, since participation doesn't translate into viewership. I wrestled as a kid too, but can imagine nothing more dull than turning on the TV to watch a swim meet.  No one's turning on the TV to watch the Colorado vs. Oklahoma State men's swim meet, nor is any network running out to buy the rights to the event. If some college kid broke the world record in the 1600 meter backstroke, would you watch the youtube video of it?  No, you would not.  You would have zero appreciation of or excitement in what you're watching.  

Gymnastics is different.  It is objectively fun to watch. It doesn't take any special skill or knowledge of the rules to appreciate the amazing athletic feats you are seeing. Just like people pay big bucks to go to a Cirque de Solail, or take their kids to the Big Top Circus.  Dual meets are all over the TV, and youtube videos of Simone Biles getting a 10 get a million views in no time.  

[Wrestleknownothing]

4 minutes ago, BAC said:

I like swimming too, but can I confess that what you wrote here, while 100% true, makes me a bit salty?

If you ask your average American to name the "greatest US Olympian ever," or lets say the top 5 greatest US Olympians, there's a good chance 3 of the 5 would be the swimmers you named.  

But are they really the greatest?  Or are they just counting up the number of medals, which favors swimming because it is the ONLY Olympic sport where you can run up a huge medal count?

Sorry, I'm not convinced Mark Spitz is any better an Olympian than, say, John Smith.  I don't think 9 golds over two Olympics in a sport where the same skill set enables you to compete in a bunch of highly-similar events, is necessarily better than getting gold in 2 different Olympics in the only event in which he could reasonably hope to qualify. 

Lets say hypothetically the IOC made 2 rule changes:  

1.  In swimming, each swimmer on your team can compete only in one event.  If you're good at the breast stroke, you don't get to stack up medals by competing in 2 different breast stroke events plus 2 different relays.  Just one.

2.  In wrestling, they have freestyle, Greco, beach wrestling, Sambo and grappling (5 styles), and to keep the numbers down, each country must have only ONE wrestler competing at a given weight class -- in other words, the same 57kg wrestler for the US also competes in 57kg Greco and 57kg Beach and so on.  

Just like that, you'd see a huge turn in popularity.  No swimmer would win more than one medal, and they'd only be on TV for that one day their event is on.  But wrestlers would be competing over several days in their various activities, and the best could finish with 3 or 4 different medals.  Advertisers would be tripping over each other to sponsor those athletes, because now suddenly they're the best marketing investment.

There are a couple missing elements:

Swimming is easier to watch. Wrestling last longer than all but the 1500 meters (and I may be the only person in the world who tunes in for that) and sometimes the 800 meters. And in many cases they do not even show the full 1500 or 800. Katie Ledecky's go to events are sometimes not even shown in their entirety, but people still tune in to see the start and finish.

World and Olympic records matter. When someone breaks a world record in swimming they are clearly the best that has ever been. The best that has ever been in wrestling is subjective. This feeds into the need for story.

Ditto for close finishes, blowouts, and come from behind wins. While they are all present in wrestling, they seem more exciting to the novice viewer of swimming than the novice viewer of wrestling. For example, in swimming it is easier to determine when a blowout happens. Viewers do not need to be reminded of the technical superiority rule in swimming, they know where the wall is.

Swimming always has young phenoms coming up. Wrestling rarely does. Or at least rarely has young phenoms who are considered gold medal challengers. Gable certainly fit that definition, but then he abandoned the sport. For the most part in swimming the young phenoms are around for multiple cycles. Phelps competed in 5 Olympics. Ledecky is going to her 4th Olympics. They both competed at 15 years old (and in Ledecky's case, won gold). And now Canada has the next phenom who is in her second Olympics at 17 years old.

Both sports are highly technical at the top end, but for viewers of wrestling you really need to understand the technical nature in order to fully enjoy viewing. Hand fighting does not make for great TV. Setting up a shot with movement and pressure does not make for good TV. That is not the case with swimming. No one follows what happens under the water even though it is the most critical element. Hell, even the announcers almost never even talk about what happens under the water. But as a swimmer from long ago, I am fascinated by how different the stroke is from when I was swimming. 

 

[BAC]

All fair points, WKN.  

[Voice of the Quakers]

As a former wrestler, current swim dad, and longtime media researcher, I find all of the analysis here spot on.

Two points to add:

1) The Olympics may be a sporting competition but the audience is atypical for a sporting competition, often skewing female and heavy on light sports viewers. For these viewers, swimming is easy to understand, easy to follow, and individual stories resonate over team sports (the Miracle on Ice and the Dream Team excepted). Plus, the ability to follow a single competitor over a multi-day competition is a plus in drawing attention. (The wrestling competition is actually only two days shorter than swimming - 7 v 9 - but once one of our competitors is done they're done.)

2) That being said, the swimming community is perpetually frustrated by its inability to market their sport outside of the Olympics. The show at Lucas Oil Stadium this week is awesome, but long term I wouldn't doubt many would rather have the the regular cadence of big dual meets, the annual party that is NCAAs and the regular TV coverage wrestling gets.

For all of our complaints, think about the last time you saw a college swim meet on TV - you probably haven't. And, if you think college wrestling duals don't attract fans, check out a college swim meet. Or, check out the NCAA swim meet - ESPNU replayed it last night and it was strictly a friends and family audience.

[BigRedFan]

49 minutes ago, BAC said:

I like swimming too, but can I confess that what you wrote here, while 100% true, makes me a bit salty?

If you ask your average American to name the "greatest US Olympian ever," or lets say the top 5 greatest US Olympians, there's a good chance 3 of the 5 would be the swimmers you named.  

But are they really the greatest?  Or are they just counting up the number of medals, which favors swimming because it is the ONLY Olympic sport where you can run up a huge medal count?

Sorry, I'm not convinced Mark Spitz is any better an Olympian than, say, John Smith.  I don't think 9 golds over two Olympics in a sport where the same skill set enables you to compete in a bunch of highly-similar events, is necessarily better than getting gold in 2 different Olympics in the only event in which he could reasonably hope to qualify. 

Lets say hypothetically the IOC made 2 rule changes:  

1.  In swimming, each swimmer on your team can compete only in one event.  If you're good at the breast stroke, you don't get to stack up medals by competing in 2 different breast stroke events plus 2 different relays.  Just one.

2.  In wrestling, they have freestyle, Greco, beach wrestling, Sambo and grappling (5 styles), and to keep the numbers down, each country must have only ONE wrestler competing at a given weight class -- in other words, the same 57kg wrestler for the US also competes in 57kg Greco and 57kg Beach and so on.  

Just like that, you'd see a huge turn in popularity.  No swimmer would win more than one medal, and they'd only be on TV for that one day their event is on.  But wrestlers would be competing over several days in their various activities, and the best could finish with 3 or 4 different medals.  Advertisers would be tripping over each other to sponsor those athletes, because now suddenly they're the best marketing investment.

Yeah, I don't think so.  Simone Biles won four gold medals in gymnastics in Rio:  you gonna change gymnastics rules so she should only have won one?  Carl Lewis won four gold medals in athletics in LA:  you gonna change the rules there, as well?  What about alpine and nordic skiing:  only one event (alpine has five!) per skier?

In track and swimming and x-country skiing, what do you do about relays? 

As for your example of John Smith winning two gold medals:  compare his two wrestling (relatively sparsely competed) golds against, say, Al Oerter:  four gold medals in the discus across four Olympic Games.  There are so many more like him that make "two in two" pale in comparison.  Oh, and Spitz swam at least *fifteen* races in the 1972 Olympics to get those seven gold medals.

Ever hear of the runner Alberto Juantorena?  Only person ever to win the 400m and the 800m in the Olympics.  To do that, he had to run four 400m races and three 800m races. Oh, and he ran either one or two races of the 4x400m relay for good measure.

[KennyEBHS]

If we accept the fact that wrestling is a nitch sport and focus the growth within that construct, we will be just fine. Heck Peacock broadcasted the olympic trials. We should be happy about all the positive news in college wrestling. Also, women HS wrestling is the fastest growing HS sport. The only change I would make to attract more viewers is simplify the freestyle rules. Right now, the rules are understood by a very small minority. Think about if a swimming race depended on a video replay of the swimmer's turn to ensure that all five toes of both feet touched the pool wall. Get real. If a scramble happens in freestyle, stop it after the same amount of time as in par terrre inactivity. This will simplify things a bit. Scrambling is great for folk but not at the senior level.

[ionel]

3 hours ago, BigRedFan said:

A quick Google shows that about 3.3 million people in the US swam on a team in 2023.  Compare that to about 300,000 high school boys and girls who wrestle competitively.  The swimming totals represent perhaps 10% of those who swim recreationally, while the wrestling numbers probably represent 99% of those who wrestle in any capacity.

But if we could throw wrastling in there a majority of Americans can relate. 

[Scouts Honor]

dont forget, there is more than one USA swimmer eligible for each event.

 

[billyhoyle]

13 hours ago, BigRedFan said:

A quick Google shows that about 3.3 million people in the US swam on a team in 2023.  Compare that to about 300,000 high school boys and girls who wrestle competitively.  The swimming totals represent perhaps 10% of those who swim recreationally, while the wrestling numbers probably represent 99% of those who wrestle in any capacity.

That doesn't explain things like the huge popularity of, say, women's gymnastics, which has ~100,000 competitors, compared to wrestling.  What does explain it?  How about visuals?  I'll leave it at that.

Most of the fans of women's gymnastics are women.  And I think that is because it is one of the most intense/insanely competitive women's sports and has been for decades. They are absolutely incredible athletes, and the fact that most of the girls competing are 16-18 and have been training for a decade for their one chance only adds to it. 

[Scouts Honor]

funny, on pardon the interruption yesterday

a big deal was made of two swimmers having a swim off for the last spot on the 4x relay... what distance i dont remember

 

 i do remember a few years ago, there was some sort of special wrestle off at fargo.. not sure if it was for the olympics

 

this is where we are.

[CHROMEBIRD]

I don't really buy the defeatist, niche sport argument. MMA, beach volleyball, and sport climbing were niche sports until they weren't. 

A big challenge imo is that wrestling doesn't really have any big charismatic personalities that have broken through outside of the sport. JB and Chamizo are popular, but they're not household names like you see (since women's sports were mentioned) in women's swimming, gymnastics, tennis, basketball, and soccer.

Even non-sports fans are able to connect with names like Katie Ledecky, Simone Biles, Naomi Osaka, Diana Taurasi, and Alex Morgan. That gives them a reason to tune-in and watch. Wrestlers otoh tend to be more subdued and humble, stick to generic talking points, and don't amplify rivalries as they should. So there's little reason for the media to pick up  on wrestling.

I mean, there are a lot of reasons why wrestling doesn't get more mainstream attention. The lack of personalities to love or hate just doesn't do the sport any favors. 

[BigRedFan]

8 minutes ago, CHROMEBIRD said:

The lack of personalities to love or hate just doesn't do the sport any favors. 

So you are saying we need AJ Ferrari?

[CHROMEBIRD]

Gotta take the good with the bad!

[Wrestleknownothing]

9 hours ago, Scouts Honor said:

funny, on pardon the interruption yesterday

a big deal was made of two swimmers having a swim off for the last spot on the 4x relay... what distance i dont remember

 

 i do remember a few years ago, there was some sort of special wrestle off at fargo.. not sure if it was for the olympics

 

this is where we are.

They tied in the individual event for the last relay spot, so there was a swim off to break the tie. Pretty standard stuff.

[Scouts Honor]

i agree.

but what i'm saying is 

PTI spent 2 minutes on it... glorifying it.

[Scouts Honor]

4 hours ago, CHROMEBIRD said:

I don't really buy the defeatist, niche sport argument. MMA, beach volleyball, and sport climbing were niche sports until they weren't. 

A big challenge imo is that wrestling doesn't really have any big charismatic personalities that have broken through outside of the sport. JB and Chamizo are popular, but they're not household names like you see (since women's sports were mentioned) in women's swimming, gymnastics, tennis, basketball, and soccer.

Even non-sports fans are able to connect with names like Katie Ledecky, Simone Biles, Naomi Osaka, Diana Taurasi, and Alex Morgan. That gives them a reason to tune-in and watch. Wrestlers otoh tend to be more subdued and humble, stick to generic talking points, and don't amplify rivalries as they should. So there's little reason for the media to pick up  on wrestling.

I mean, there are a lot of reasons why wrestling doesn't get more mainstream attention. The lack of personalities to love or hate just doesn't do the sport any favors. 

i dont disagree. but i think this is DUE to the fact the TV follows and promotes those athletes.

when was the last time a wrestler was promoted? maybe JB

maybe Rulon, AFTER he beat the russian.