The USA Swimming Pro Swim Series, dating back to its prior live as the Grand Prix Series, has employed a relatively-stable cast of the crowned-jewels of American pools on a rotating hosting schedule for the country’s biggest non-championship meets of the year. That could change, according to an email sent by USA Swimming CEO Tim Hinchey in May.
Previously, USA Swimming has paid meet hosts a $20,000 management fee. Moving forward, they will instead send out a Request for Proposals (RFP), wherein they will be hoping that cities will pay a “rights fee” to host the events.
“The RFP will explain the technical requirements required in hosting but will also extoll the value of the USA Swimming brand and detail the benefits and potential income opportunities in hosting these events,” the email reads.
The change wouldn’t happen until the 2019-2020 season, which presumably means that next year’s series will continue as planned, and the intent is to distribute the RFPs this summer and award the sites by September’s United States Aquatic Sports Convention.
This will just open it up for cities where it is expensive as all get out to travel into to host the meets. Cough cough Omaha cough cough
Lynchburg, Tennesee wants a basketball team…so maybe they could also go after one of these meets to rev up the Jack Daniels community.
Once again, as soon as swimming makes an attempt to “increase revenue” and “improve exposure” everyone freeeeaks out and resists it. We saw this with the alcohol decision, where despite every other major sport selling alcohol at their events, it would be unfathomable to have alcohol at our meets. We also saw this with the 50 shootouts, 200 mystery IM, and mixed relays. Many people here blasted the ideas before they were even implemented, and the pros and relevant swimmers who claim they want to “grow the sport” refuse to participate in them. (Dressel and Adrian skipping shootouts to just hang out at finals; only club swimmers doing the mystery IM).
Pick a side people. If you really want the… Read more »
Expensive to attend these meets. Seats not full until the last day. Can’t believe any money is made by the host.
This sounds a lot like the “I won’t pay you but you’ll get tons of exposure” type deals that a lot of artists/freelancers get offered. My guess is maybe the get a few bites the first year, and then once cities/orgs realize that they aren’t actually making money off of it, they struggle to find good hosts the following year.
Its like bidding on the olympics then?
Cool, include travel expenses for officials in the requirements…
“will also extoll the value of the USA Swimming brand and detail the benefits and potential income opportunities in hosting these events”
You can “extoll” all you want, but the USA Swimming brand means pretty close to nothing if you don’t have recognized Olympic talent on the psych sheet. If you’re going to go down the RFP path, you need to exchange something of real value – at minimum you will need a commitment from the biggest USA Swimming athletes, plus maybe some controversial high profile internationals (hello, Yulia Efimova?), so that the host has some sizzle to promote and broaden their reach. Pretty sure USA Swimming can’t deliver that sort of collateral for all (or maybe any) of the… Read more »
Great point. Once Lilly King graduates, pay an appearance fee, replay the finger wag over and over, secure a King / Efimova showdown and people would pay. Unfortunately it would probably take that or Phelps/LeClos or Lochte vs Brazilian prosecutors to draw the crowds in and then we’re just becoming WWE.
They can’t get Dressel? Ledecky? Murphy? Lochte?
If USAS has the ability to get income from the Pro Series that they can funnel back into the sport then I’m all for them doing rather than paying out $100K or more to host the events. I do wonder about the economic impact. My guess is that a high level three day age group meet has a much greater economic impact to a community getting parents and kids and all those hotel stays and restaurant outings (look at Greensboro as a great example of positive impact). Not sure how many people travel overnight to the Pro Swim. A community could do it to put themselves on the swimming map to then be able to monetize the age group and… Read more »
I think that’s probably the model – as a city you’re monetizing the participants, not the spectators. We now have a sister site about volleyball, volleymob.com, and hosting the big tournaments there is major money because its thousands upon thousands of participants.