The International Swimming League announced details of its 2021 season in a press release today, confirming all ten returning franchises.
The ISL release unveils a format roughly similar to last year’s – but spread out further. The 2020 season was compressed amid the coronavirus pandemic, with teams living, training, and competing within a bubble to protect from COVID-19 complications.
2021 will be the third season for the upstart professional swimming league. The inaugural season (2019) featured eight teams and seven total matches. The second season (2020) added two more teams and nearly doubled the total meets to 13.
According to the ISL press release, the 2021 season won’t add any new franchises, but the ten established teams will all return. The season will be spread out, though, between late August and December, with a total of 18 matches, each featuring four teams.
A few more details from the release:
- Locations are still being determined, but the ISL says it is talking to “cities in Asia, Europe, and North America.”
- Eight of the ten teams will return their same General Managers. Energy Standard coach James Gibson is stepping into the GM role – that comes after former GM Jean-Francois Salessy publicly resigned and blasted both the ISL and Energy Standard in an open letter. Meanwhile, the Aqua Centurions are still looking for a GM to replace Alessandra Guerra.
- The regular season will remain at ten total matches, with each team competing in four of the ten. But instead of the two lowest-finishing teams being instantly eliminated at the end of the regular season, the league will hold an 11th regular season match with the four lowest teams competing for two playoff spots.
- The playoffs are also expanded from last year’s plans, which included just two semifinals. This year’s playoffs will feature 6 total matches, 3 per team.
The league has hinted that it plans to have something resembling a draft for roster construction, but we don’t yet have any details on that, or on how teams can retain swimmers from last season.
Season Plan
The season will be broken into three parts in a similar format to last year, though with a more spread-out schedule than the compressed version we had amid the coronavirus pandemic this season.
Regular Season (6 Weeks)
- Begins in late August
- Ends in late September
- Location to be determined
- 10 teams / 10 matches (4 matches per team)
- Top 6 teams automatically make the Playoffs
- The bottom four teams will compete in an 11th match, with the top two finishers in that bottom match joining the 8-team playoff field.
Playoff Phase (3 Weeks)
- Takes place in November
- Location to be determined
- 8 teams / 6 matches (3 matches per team)
- Top 4 teams advance to the Grand Final
ISL Grand Final
- Takes place in December
- Location to be determined
- 4 teams
I think the time commitment and being away from normal training environment isn’t worth the money. Need to condense the season
It feels like Australia are still missing out on some sort of recognition that they were promised since the start of this in 2019. It’d be a great country as one of the host nations if they are going back to having many due to the fact that swimming is extremely popular there or if they decide to stick with the format of only one host nation does this increase their chances in having a team in the league in future seasons because the original reason for them not getting that was time zones were too different but this what be eliminated if there was only one host nation. Who knows we will see in the future I’m still looking… Read more »
There was talk of having a Gold Coast (Queensland) meet but then the quarantine restrictions were just too difficult.
Where is the money bukowski
I really hope Grigorishin can keep paying the athletes and staff for many years to come. He has managed to set up a format where the best swimmers in the world compete against each other SCM and go at it for weeks on end, no silly prelim swims neither the swimmers nor fans care about. World Cup or Duel in the Pool don’t even come close. If he wants to spend his money on this rather than a yacht, what the hell, let him do it.
I honestly don’t believe a league like this is ever going to be profitable simply because there aren’t enough casual swim fans out there to attract big sponsors. For true swim fans, it’s… Read more »
Seems there is a pretty big gap between end of “regular season” & start of the playoffs. Like at least one whole month. Hope it doesn’t hurt the athletes.
Bring ISL Grand Final to Miami Beach
It must be nice to have so many millions to throw down the toilet… the average person is simply not interested in swimming events outside of Olympic games, TV ratings have been super low.. it can’t be a self-sustainable project
Yeah, if the owner is okay with losing millions then he should pay the bills on time
Broadcast deals aren’t the only way to generate revenue, not to mention we’re only coming up on Season 3 (with Season 2 having been restricted due to covid). I believe that he has likely budgeted out for at least a few seasons worth of the league to give it runway to break even. One of the biggest things that could help them IMO is going directly to your target audience and making the matches easily available to watch LIVE online (for a small subscription). That makes far more sense than relying on broadcast distribution only. Millennials and Gen Z (and even many older gens) don’t pay for cable TV packages anymore, but they will pay for streaming services or give… Read more »
Broadcast deals aren’t the only way to generate revenue…but they’re probably the only way to generate enough revenue to cover the costs that we’ve seen so far.
I don’t know if the audience for subscription to this will support it. Let’s say it’s $20/person…do you think there are 4 million households who would pay $20 to watch a season of ISL Swimming?
I don’t, but maybe I’m wrong.
Would it be nice to see audit and financial report of ISL for the last season.
I talked to a few swimmers from UK and Sweden. They are still not paid and afraid that
they will not get their fees
Stitches are for snitches.
I was told that it took until June for all athletes to get paid after season 1.
So, they aren’t past that timeline yet. I also wouldn’t say that this is a positive way to operate, but it’s not out of line with the past history yet.
ISL has been challenging to work with for the media, for their vendors, for the fans, for their staff…but the one group that they seem intent on keeping happy are the athletes. I think the athletes will be paid, even if that’s later than expected.
I’ve heard the same, about how everything is geared toward keeping the athletes happy. And this is why I worry about the league’s future. The athletes are important, yes, but without all of those other things working, you can’t have a business. Konstantin talks about a ‘post modern’ sport, but he lives in this pre-historic world where he doesn’t want to acknowledge the vast number of stakeholders that need to be managed for a professional sports league to be successful.
Feels like a pet project and a billionaire swim fan who is buying access to the athletes he admires.
Which is fine, it’s his money, but the athletes should plan accordingly and not count on the well staying wet forever.
I do hope so either that both swimmers (and STAFF!!!) will be paid in full. Anyway, desperately want to see a financial report. If any positive sediment will remain? Is it real McCoy or just another bubble…???
Would also be nice to see the same thing for FINA and take a look at how much they pocket vs what they actually pay out to the swimmers who generate all of the value.