Foilers for sale

Originally posted by NickM99

Originally posted by NickM99

IMHO, put simply there are factors that will limit the growth of foiling: 

- Geography/accessibility - a majority of sailing clubs are based on waters that are too small the allow them.  How far is a wannabe foiler who does not live near open water going to drive to find a suitable venue often enough to build his/her skills?

- Sailing demographic - a lot of us are too old/unfit to master foiling (other than in something like a UFO maybe,) but are still up to sailing older "fast" dinghies like the Contender/Fireball.

- Cost/fragility of kit

- in the future: culture - as the RYA webinars have said the younger generation is looking for accessible "experiences."  The underlying suggestion is that they may not have the depth of commitment that would be required to master foiling and accept all the costs (time/money) of sticking with it. 

But promoting foiling is no bad thing.  It is spectacular and appeals visually even to the non sailor. The obvious analogy is motoring where magazines and TV shows test supercars we are never going to drive and motor cycling enthusiasts pile into watch superbike MotoGPs

While you are (IMHO) right on the money with most of that, Nick, it can easily be said that the evidence points the other way to the last paragraph. Promoting extreme craft CAN be a bad thing when the sport is already thought of as being too elitist, scary and expensive. Spectacular sports are often not very popular, nor are sports with visual appeal particularly popular. 

Motorsport can be seen as an example of what NOT do to. It receives huge funding from the world's biggest industry (the general motor industry) yet in many ways it's a very poor performer as a participant sport. Annual motorsport turnover in the UK is about 9 billion pounds, the motorsport industry had 38,000 jobs, but just 8-9,000 regular competitors and 33,000 license holders. (Sports UK/parliamentary figures)

The UK sailing industry is worth about 10% (from what I can find) of a 3 billion p.a. leisure boating and small business marine craft industry, so it's a tiny fraction of the size of the motorsport sector. Yet according to Sport England and RYA figures, about three times as many race sailboats than compete in motorsport.

The fact that far more people compete in our sport, despite the much lower financial support and the fact that most people can drive and not sail, indicates that motor racing is not a good model to follow. Similarly, the top-selling sailing mag is 18% as popular as the top-selling car mag which seems to indicate, given the comparative size of the markets and advertisers, that sailing is doing it better than motorsport.

The other thing about the appeal of spectacular sailing is that the extreme end of sailing is developing incredibly quickly in many ways and yet participation is declining. In a bit over two decades, the heavily-publicised "extreme" boats (Moths, AC boats, Volvo boats, etc) have come close to tripling their top speed and yet the sport has shrunk. If heavily publicising extreme performance attracted participants, why would participation drop when speeds increased dramatically?

Motorsport is aware that the excessive promotion of high speed events is a problem. In a parliamentary committee, the head of the British motorsport association "expressed concern that high-profile events such as the Grand Prix distorted people's perceptions of the sport, and left them with the impression that it was an activity in which only the wealthy could afford to participate". So not only is the elitist/extreme image a bad one for a sport, but one of the most elitist and extreme of sports already knows it. Why should sailing follow?

Edited by Chris 249 - 08 Mar 19 at 3:10am