Emotional Connection

One reason spectators watch events is that they have an emotional connection with the players and/or the team. Our players love disc golf, but they love playing much more than they love watching others play. So, how can we increase the emotional connection to compel more people to watch disc golf events? The most basic is to develop a connection to specific players and how they perform in events. 

In big time professional sports, we care about many of the players for a variety of reasons that we've discovered about them in addition to how they perform. In some cases, it's their attitude while they perform (i.e., bad boys). Additional reasons might include their attractiveness and how they act away from sports (faith, volunteer efforts). But just as important are the reasons TMZ covers them. This includes how much money they earn, what they do with it, and especially the people they are spending it on or spending time with. Even with Tiger's struggles, his playing group is still one that the fans come out to watch.

Much of this emotional connection (both positive and negative can be good) is enhanced by significant media exposure and high player income, neither of which is currently available to our top players in disc golf. Can we find other ways to increase the potential for an emotional connection?

Photo courtesy of DailyMail.

Team Rivalries

One way to develop an emotional connection is to create the desire to root for your team. Disc golf team play using scores from individual matches has been around for over 25 years, maybe longer. However, these half dozen or so disc golf match play team events involve mostly temporary teams where only some of them might directly represent an area or club. The teams are rarely connected with or sponsored by an identifiable community or company where people not involved with the sport might have an emotional connection. 

These team match play formats are fun and players enjoy this change of pace. However, this temporary team match play format is not suitable for fans and spectators to develop as strong of an emotional connection to a team and its members in the same way fans love the Green Bay Packers or The Ohio State Buckeyes. The new Team World Championship will hopefully develop continent or country patriotism to support their teams.

Consider team play, collegiate style. Two formats are used to showcase head-to-head team competition between complete 4-man teams in a group and individual medal play among all team members. There are no individual head-to-head matches in either format. Although it looks like the two 4-player teams in each group are playing against each other in a match play format, their team scores thrown using this creative Alternating Doubles Best Shot format are simply recorded as part of their team score in relation to all teams.

Colorado State University - 2012 National Collegiate Disc Golf Championships Winners

Separate from the heightened drama and potential emotional connection with both your team and players in these formats, is the identity of each team and institution it represents remains stable and recognizable over the years. These college teams play in events throughout the year so it's not just a one and done event. And more importantly, colleges have a huge potential fan base that can be tapped that includes current students, their extended families, faculty, staff and alumni.

A new way for players to start developing an emotional connection with their local disc golf team might be for a promoter to organize national team play by simply using player scores from existing singles events to start with versus creating a whole new series of team specific events. These team "overlay" scores would be determined from how individual players on each team finish in our existing NT and A-tier singles events and perhaps a Major or two. This version of team scoring works simply by adding up the finish positions of each team member in their regular singles competition. The teams are then ranked by the sum of their teammates' finish positions relative to other team's members. A smaller sum ranks higher.

Each official team could be created and overseen by a partnership among a PDGA Affiliated Club, their local, regional or state convention bureau or chamber of commerce, and potentially one or more local sponsors. The idea would be to develop a strong community identity where members of that community, going beyond just disc golfers, might eventually become interested in watching or supporting their team and disc golf in general because those players are representing them. These organized teams would likely get better local/regional media coverage than individuals and it would likely help local promoters find more willing sponsors when hosting lower tier local events.

Individual Rivalries

It's tough to create individual celebrity by yourself where nationally, or even globally, people care about what you think and do. Fortunately, there are now ways to perhaps build notoriety more quickly than in the past using general Internet options like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube plus sport specific sites like PDGA, Disc Golf Scene, and many other message boards run by clubs. 

No matter what you think about Scott Stokely, you likely have heard about him resurfacing and perhaps even have an emotional reaction to him from his various online promotional efforts or his hop, skip and jump road show clinics. Some older players who remember him may now be curious about how he'll do in his return. Nonetheless, many more players of all ages now care about what's going on with Scott, and even his fabricated rivalries, than most of the other 40+ year old players that still have game.

Individual rivalries seem to be enhanced in sports where the primary format is individual match play (tennis, wrestling) versus team play (soccer, basketball) versus personal competitions such as faster times in track or competing against the course as in skiing or golf. On the more brutal side of match play (think boxing, MMA or WWE), the emotional interest in combatants has been heightened by promoters creating both heroic and villainous figures. I'm not suggesting we go so far as to develop a dueling disc, pro format played similar to dodgeball. But, wouldn't you watch it?

Our current disc golf match play format with a small tweak would create more direct competitions among our star players (perhaps developing stronger rivalries) in comparison to our current singles format where players "compete against the course". Only sometimes are scores close enough where we see players forced into more match play decisions on holes near the end of the event that might differ from their choices during earlier rounds. Watching or filming events is even further complicated when scores are close enough that a challenger and sometimes eventual winner comes from another card not being watched.

Chess tournaments typically use the Swiss pairing system for their matches. This Swiss system is designed so everyone plays every round and no one is eliminated, unlike our typical single and double elimination events. Each round players are paired against players who currently have match scores the same or close to theirs even if not in the same division.

Photo courtesy of ChessBase.com.

In many events, our divisions are large enough that separate Swiss pairings could be run for each division. Match ties are allowed (no sudden death needed) except in the title match if a tie doesn't produce a clear overall winner. Finish positions are based on ranking players' final match scores within their division.

This is a well-defined format that could work well for disc golf. It's been tried successfully a few times. So far, most of our match play events have used single or double elimination formats resulting in many players going home before the last rounds. Regardless of format, match play can produce closely contested head-to-head matches that generate a stronger emotional connection and interest from spectators. And, the winner will always come from the top group in the last round.

The takeaway from this section is to figure out ways to help spectators develop an emotional reason for watching disc golf or even just casually paying attention to it. We're handcuffed at the moment to apply some of the options available in big-time sports to garner spectator attention. But perhaps ideas like the team overlay concept could be done with existing resources to develop rivalries and eventually capture spectator attention, connection and eventually, loyalty.

In Part 4, we look closer at Spectacles and Smaller Venues as potential ways to attract spectators.