Allen Best, seasoned reporter for the Vail Valley Times, was struck by some attitudes on ski racing expressed by Messrs George Gillett and Adam Aron, respectively CEOs of Booth Creek Partners and Vail Resorts, when speaking to a crowd of some 500 people assembled in Colorado Springs in May for state and national ski conferences. Following is part of the report Best filed on what they said:
Asked recently about the need for heroes in expanding the popularity of skiing, George Gillett said he sees heroes in snowboarding being more imminent than in skiing.
And speed is relative, said Gillett, recalling when he owned greyhound racing tracks. As an experiment, slower dogs were paired in well-matched races. Then faster dogs were put into less competitive races. The slower dogs were perceived by a crowd of 5,000 as the faster dogs. That sort of thing is understood very well by the administrators of Nascar, the fastest growing sport in the world, he said. He suggested they will feign all sorts of race-track troubles to rein in car racers who are getting ahead of the field, and hence to make the races more competitive.
Adam Aron, CEO of Vail Resorts, tilted even more at the windmill of international ski racing. While cautioning that his impressions are those of an executive with less than a year’s experience in the ski industry, Aron said he thought ski racing and recreational skiing for people on three- to seven-day vacations are fundamentally different sports. Growth at resorts is being driven by groomed runs on intermediate terrain, he said. He attributed Beaver Creek’s 15 percent growth in skier days this past year to the opening of the “mild as it can be” intermediate cruising terrain at Bachelor Gulch.
“Is it possible,” he asked, “that the only time people see skiing on television is when they see a ski racer going 85 mph straight down a cliff? Does that really help our sport, or does it hurt us? Because it is not clear to me that an average vacationer can identify with that racer the way that the average eight-year-old kid identifies with an NBA player, because shooting baskets outside your garage is exactly what they do in the NBA,” he said.
The debate on the proper image for skiing is as old as the sport. The cliché cover shot for a ski publication in the 1950s was of a red-sweatered skier taking air—albeit small air by today’s standards—off a cornice. Letters inevitably followed, critical of the extreme image that hurt the sport’s growth.
Our conclusion is that each sport develops its own distinct emotional triggers, and success in playing on these triggers comes only from analyzing and understanding them. First, one must distinguish between spectator appeal and participatory appeal and understand the mix. Gillett’s greyhound and race car examples are truly spectator sports, overwhelmingly watched by non-participants. The observation he makes about perceptions of speed are fascinating and ring true.
The basketball imagery of Adam Aron is also correct, but though there are millions who have shot buckets outside their garages, the commercial value of the sport is for its television audience, the vast majority of whom are not current participants. The ultimate appeal of televised basketball is often focused on the last three minutes of a close game that may be drawn out to ten or more suspenseful minutes as time-outs are called, intentional fouling strategies put into play, official clocks reset and the frowning foul-shooter endlessly bouncing the ball, while coaches emote feverishly on the sidelines. The sport lives by its cliff-hangers as much as it does by its colorful super-heroes.
There is also an emotional connection between most viewers and the sport because almost everyone can identify with the player at the foul line trying to throw a ball through a hoop. You are that player, capable of sinking a basket, in a way you are not that greyhound or even that race car driver.
Could skiing and boarding be so repackaged that they could garner a major following by non-participants? Experience and common sense say No, though there will always be a few who think otherwise.
Golf presents another and different picture. It is the vast army of participant or inactive golfers who drive the sport. Even the worst hackers experience the thrill of the occasional good or lucky shot so they can, and do, identify with the tournament player—even more so when a Tiger Woods shanks an iron, drops a fairway wood into the pond or circles the hole on a two-foot putt.
Does this automatically translate to participant growth? Certainly, to a degree, but we would suggest not as much as is claimed. More significant is the lifestyle factor—the image of golf course living, the friendly weekend foursome, the round of business golf.
And this leads us back to skiing and its image. What are the emotional triggers? How do skiers and riders see themselves? Are we as distinct as the aficionados of greyhound racing, basketball and golf?
The conclusion here is that our snow sports live and thrive on the elements of thrill, excitement, energy and, yes, beauty. There is a huge emotional component. Our appeal as a spectator sport, Olympic viewership notwithstanding, is minor.
People like the image of being a skier or rider. The sport conveys status, makes you special, someone to be admired—or so you think, and that’s what counts. There is an aura of dash and daring, of adventure. In reality it may, and usually does, translate to something akin to Aron’s “mild-as-can-be” cruising terrain at Beaver Creek, but the hook that originally got that vacationer there could well have been Seth Morrison blasting a sick line at Valdez, or Tommy Moe in an 85 mph racing crouch. We feel these images are essential for the sport’s future.
The resort brochure may be well advised to convey friendly images of kids having fun or family skiing, but the sport as a whole must continue to reinforce and exploit the images that convey thrill and excitement. No, there will be only a handful with the athleticism and temperament to huck off cliffs or even drop in on a steep tree run, but we all like to identify with the sport where people do those things.
Do we lose customers because we project a perception of danger? Probably a few, but not nearly as many as we gain because of that perception. And the activity probably would not be a good fit for people scared of its dangers. They would give up long before they reached the level where they could enjoy the sport. As Gillett postulated, speed is relative, so a beginner gets a thrill ripping down a slope at five miles-per-hour. That’s what the sport has always been about, and it’s not for everyone. Our market is not everyone; it’s for those who have at least a modicum of thrill-seeking in their psychological make-up.
The puritanical, joyless cloak prescribed for our sports by the old industry risk managers is lifting, thanks in large measure to the uninhibited exuberance of the snowboarding world. We sense this could be a prescription for growth.
