HERMOSA BEACH, California — After a dismal, 0-3 efficiency on the World Championships for Tri Bourne and Chaim Schalk, coupled with a fourth-place end for USA rivals Trevor Crabb and Theo Brunner, it wasn’t exhausting to guess what the brunt of questions on this week’s mailbag episode of SANDCAST could be centered round: Did Bourne remorse his choice this previous December to dump Crabb and decide up Schalk?
True sufficient, almost half of the questions in our inbox revolved round on that very matter.
“Let me guess,” Bourne stated, earlier than I learn him the primary query, “do you remorse your choice?”
He laughed.
But it surely was honest for the handfuls (and dozens) of followers to surprise: Did he?
“No,” he stated, leaning again. “I don’t.”
Then he thought for a second earlier than elaborating.
“I believe the factor that persons are lacking is the why,” he added. “In the event you do issues for the proper causes, then you must again your self by the highs and the lows. It’s really easy to take a look at Trevor taking part in properly and say ‘He’d be taking part in properly with you proper now, you’d be in a greater place.’ We had been simply in a spot the place I wanted change. I don’t need to do that anymore the identical method, whether or not it’s tired of it or I need to attempt new issues, I wished to try to go and take the following step, which is extraordinarily exhausting to do while you’re on the prime degree. I hadn’t carried out that internationally, so I took that threat for the proper causes on the proper time. I don’t remorse the choice.
“Sooner or later, I need to make choices the identical method. Simply because it goes south doesn’t imply it’s the fallacious factor to do. It’s a threat it doesn’t matter what. It will have been a threat staying with Trev as properly. However you positively give it some thought when Trev’s doing good and also you’re not, you’re like ‘damnnn.’ You don’t deny that out of your head. You simply put on these ideas when you’re in your lows. For certain this has been essentially the most irritating, most troublesome emotionally, mentally, even bodily, simply making an attempt to determine it out realizing I put myself on this scenario. It’s tremendous troublesome.”
In the mean time, Bourne and Schalk are No. 20 within the Olympic rankings, 4 spots behind Crabb and Brunner, although even that hole is deceiving, as Bourne and Schalk have two extra finishes to their complete. Among the many prime 4 USA males’s groups within the race, they’re the one staff with out a medal, and have but to even make a semifinal. On the AVP this season, Bourne’s prize cash was almost chopped in half from 2022 — he did play two fewer occasions, however his common per occasions was greater than $2,000 much less — and Schalk additionally noticed an analogous drop. Internationally, their common end has plummeted.
Neither participant is in denial: It has been an objectively tough season, notably given their expectations. Initially of the 12 months, they had been broadly thought-about to be the highest males’s USA staff. Now they’re scrambling to easily stay on the USA Volleyball stipend, given to the highest 12 gamers within the federation. This weekend’s Problem occasion in Haikou, China, is larger than most understand, with implications far past motion within the Olympic rankings.
There have been glimmers, indicators that an elite staff is in there someplace: A fifth on the Uberlandia Elite16, three large matches with the Czech Republic, Germany, and Sweden in Tepic, a win over Alex Brouwer and Robert Meeuwsen. It’s a matter of constructing these performances sustainable, with each Schalk and Bourne taking part in at a excessive degree on the similar time, one thing that has occurred sporadically, and by no means throughout a whole match.
So far as remorse, nonetheless, Bourne says he doesn’t have any. He appreciated the method by which he made the choice.
They now have eight months left to make it the proper one.
Why doesn’t the AVP use YouTube for broadcasting?
As we talked about on the podcast, we’ve tried to get somebody on the AVP on for so long as the present has been going — at the moment marks our six-year anniversary, so at the moment makes it six years of futility in that regard — however there hasn’t been curiosity. So this reply is barely our greatest hypothesis. As a common rule of thumb, nonetheless, anytime there’s a query on this realm, the reply is nearly at all times cash.
That’s the prism we’ll use to reply this query. On condition that lens, the numbers simply don’t make sense.
On common, YouTube pays roughly $6 per 1,000 viewers, which can also be the commonly accepted price for advertisers on tv as properly. The ladies’s finals of the 2022 AVP Chicago Gold Sequence, when it was streamed on YouTube, amassed 49,000 viewers and the lads hit 61,000. In Phoenix, the numbers had been even decrease: 30,000 for the ladies, 60,000 for the lads. Taken all collectively, Phoenix hit 394,000 views for your complete match.
You don’t should have a math diploma to know that these numbers don’t work properly for the underside line when subtracting the income from the manufacturing and expertise prices, which will be substantial when producing a stream for, say, ESPN+.
The quandary smaller sports activities like seaside volleyball discover themselves in is that in addition they don’t work for linear tv, both. A time purchase on NBC or ESPN would even be a monetary loss, and it will additionally — and did in 2023 — tick off followers who couldn’t watch it dwell and likewise couldn’t return and discover the replays.
Streaming and tv is a much more difficult scenario than followers give the AVP credit score for. Volleyball World was sensible in packaging seaside with indoor on VolleyballTV, however the AVP doesn’t have that luxurious, because it doesn’t have an app, nor does it have an indoor associate (it may associate with VolleyballTV, one thing I believe most followers would love, however how the financials would shake out, I’m undecided).
What’s the answer?
There isn’t one.
To borrow a phrase from economist and creator Thomas Sowell: “There are not any options, solely trade-offs.”
When Steve Obradovich ran the inaugural Newport Seaside Volleyball Invitational a number of weekends in the past, he initially wished to stream it. The McKibbin brothers suggested him in opposition to it, as an alternative pushing for the next high quality post-produced product at a fraction of the price that will, if truth be told, get extra views than in the event that they streamed it dwell. Their first video had 41,000 views in its first six days — greater than each ladies’s AVP closing that was streamed dwell on YouTube in 2022, matches which have had greater than a 12 months to realize views.
With viewership of a post-produced product prone to surpass that of a dwell viewers, at a fraction of the price, what are the tradeoffs? For one, sports activities are one of many final bastions of tv the place it’s essential to look at it dwell. You’ll be able to miss each season of Recreation of Thrones and it doesn’t matter; you’ll be able to simply binge it while you need. Even if you happen to’ve been uncovered to spoiler alerts, it doesn’t smash the present (that is precisely what I did). But when the outcomes of the Manhattan Seaside Open earlier than it was televised — as many did, given the tape-delayed nature of the televised product this 12 months — there’s little incentive for the informal fan to tune in. The superfans are nonetheless prone to watch, they’ll nonetheless need to know the way the outcomes got here to be. However the trade-off in a delayed stream or video is that a large chunk will shrug it off and never watch. There’s additionally no likelihood the McKibbins, or whoever, may produce each match all through a match; at greatest, they’d cowl the semifinals and finals, together with possibly the spotlight match of the primary few days.
What the post-produced matches may do, nonetheless, is add additional incentive for followers to really present as much as tournaments. If the one solution to watch the sporting occasion dwell is to attend in particular person, it’s doable the attendance would see a major enhance. This might probably imply extra income on merchandise gross sales, extra eyeballs for the sponsor village, extra VIP gross sales, and in the end a greater aesthetic for images and movies to pitch to future advertisers and sponsors.
It will be a greater look than the relative ghost-town that was a lot of New Orleans or Miami (the night time matches in New Orleans, nonetheless, had been positively electrical, however the finals had been dismal in attendance).
Is {that a} assure extra followers would present up? No, however I’d wager on it. And I believe seaside volleyball is definitely one of many few sports activities remaining the place it’s higher to look at in particular person than it’s on tv.
Would folks be upset if this had been the trail taken? After all. However folks will likely be upset no matter what the AVP does with its streaming and tv choices, so all of it actually boils all the way down to what tradeoffs the AVP is keen to make.
What’s necessary for followers to know, nonetheless, is that, as Sowell stated, there are not any options.
Solely trade-offs.
Any situations the place USA will get three ladies’s groups within the Paris Olympics?
No. Sorry. I’d find it irresistible if it had been doable and Betsi Flint and Julia Scoles may then compete in Paris, however there are zero situations during which this could occur.
When Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes gained the World Championships, that didn’t open up one other bid for the USA; it solely assured one bid for the USA, and that bid isn’t even technically assured for Cheng and Hughes. USA can theoretically ship whomever it needs. Every staff can solely account for one bid. So if Cheng and Hughes qualify on factors and successful World Championships — which is nearly a certainty at this level — they will solely use a type of bids. The opposite will trickle all the way down to the 18th ranked staff within the Olympic rankings.
Why don’t extra groups promote themselves in addition to TKN?
Kristen Nuss and Taryn Kloth do an exquisite job selling themselves. They’ve their very own Instagram web page. They promote merch. They only began essentially the most completely named podcast: Small Discuss & Tall Tales.
Greater than something, nonetheless, they’ve two issues many groups don’t: A novel identification, and an entire lot of wins.
They’re the one prime staff who has remained in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Everybody else, proficient as they could be, is a bit identity-less, all lumped collectively as simply one other staff in Southern California. The south loves their sports activities, and the Louisiana group has rallied round Nuss and Kloth as in the event that they had been the Saints or Pelicans or LSU Tigers which, in fact, they’re. They play up the function of southern belles properly, terribly aggressive whereas remaining the well mannered, charming ladies they’re.
They’re not like anybody else within the USA.
Factor is: They may have the identification and the podcast and the merch and the vibe and none of it will matter in the event that they didn’t have the wins. As Kent Steffes likes to say: “Profitable solves a variety of issues.”
Profitable is the best promotional instrument there’s. In the event that they had been dropping, it’s not exhausting to look into the minds of followers. Many would look down upon their promotions as being grandiose, a bit huge for his or her britches. Who’re they, a middling staff, to be promoting merch? What are they pondering, staying in Louisiana? That’ll by no means work! They should be a part of the highest groups in California! It’s the one method!
See what I imply?
Profitable is the final word promotion. Simply take a look at how the narrative shifted round Trevor Crabb. For years, he was #NeverTrevor, as a result of he was the king of self-promotion with out the wins to again it up. Now he’s #ForeverTrevor.
He hasn’t modified.
His file has.
And that’s modified every little thing.
