Good point as well. A Zone, for instance, is quite clearly a mid. But Discraft classifies it as a putter, despite the rim similarities (depth, width, general shape) to all of their mids.
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Ricky Wysocki #38008
- Thread starter DiscFifty
- Start date
I agree it's more like a mid than a putter. However I think the mid classification works a lot with disc diameter. All their mids have about a 0.5mm wider diameter (max weight is also 5 gram heavier). The zone has a diameter similar to their putters.
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DatRedDude
Eagle Member
As a lifetime Reds fan, they suck, they suck bad right now. When a team sucks you have to hope the visiting team can fill the seats.
zontar
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oh for Pete's sake!opcorn:
What you did there...
So... first MPO player to reach $100,000 in sanctioned tournament winnings in a single season (I don't know if there's some random non-sanctioned Wham-O 80 bajillion dollar winner from the 70s). And a chance to go get a little more scratch from biscoe at the LMO in a few weeks.
Tattar is currently not registered for anything coming up so it feels safe to say that Ricky is gonna wind up with the highest earnings total in PDGA history.
The real question is - was this year peak disc golf earnings for a few years? How long will he hold this title? McBeth would still be hot on his tail if not for Gannon continuing to show that composure that won him the USDGC, ripping it up down the stretch (though like Tattar, McBeth is not registered for anything coming up).
Tattar is currently not registered for anything coming up so it feels safe to say that Ricky is gonna wind up with the highest earnings total in PDGA history.
The real question is - was this year peak disc golf earnings for a few years? How long will he hold this title? McBeth would still be hot on his tail if not for Gannon continuing to show that composure that won him the USDGC, ripping it up down the stretch (though like Tattar, McBeth is not registered for anything coming up).
It's possible (not to drag this thread into the same muck that the rest of the treads that have this subject fall into) that the PDGA is about to step into a steaming pile re: the issue of transgender participation. IF they do and IF that makes sponsors uneasy, that might make it hard the the DGPT to raise as much outside sponsorship cash as we had this year. That could lead to a payout dip.
Or...maybe not. I kinda think the sport is going to fall back at some point just because booms are usually followed by busts, and disc golf has jumped pretty high pretty fast. But I've been wrong before.
At any rate, if the bubble bursts then whoever held the record for most earnings in a year will hold that for quite a while after that. Is the bubble ready to pop? Hell, I don't know.
biscoe
* Ace Member *
I think it is still going to trend upward for 2023 at the very least. In some ways DGPT is just hitting their stride.
Yeah, my thought is - if things are trending upward, or even if they stall, there's a chance that his number gets beat next year considering the number of players who had a shot at a likewise >100K total going into the last day of the DGPT Championship. And then on top of that you consider that Tattar got there without playing a giant chunk of the season and Ricky got to his own number despite missing a little time hurt and played gimpy for a minute.
I also wonder what kind of earnings could happen if one of the legit top-15 guys decided to go full mid-2000s Geoff Bennett and play as many disc golf tournaments as humanly possible...
https://www.pdga.com/player/24962/stats/2008
top 10 in 60% of NTs played
top 10 in 66% of M played
Obviously, given the length of and frequency of DGPT events that player wouldn't hit the 60+ event mark... but this year it looks like the big earner among "Road Warriors" was Thomas Gilbert who has played 32 events so far with 5 on his docket, sits at 20K - but not quite comparable given that after a hot start to his season he was pretty much a non-factor at the top of tour events.
https://www.pdga.com/player/24962/stats/2008
top 10 in 60% of NTs played
top 10 in 66% of M played
Obviously, given the length of and frequency of DGPT events that player wouldn't hit the 60+ event mark... but this year it looks like the big earner among "Road Warriors" was Thomas Gilbert who has played 32 events so far with 5 on his docket, sits at 20K - but not quite comparable given that after a hot start to his season he was pretty much a non-factor at the top of tour events.
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Yeah you gotta cut FPO off eventually from the DGPT. Right now it's so subsidized by the MPO side in terms of literal sponsorship and ticket sales and soft subsidization in terms of partners sharing vans and housing. As the numbers get bigger you're gonna have to cut bait.
This seems like a very big tangential jump away from the topic of conversation, but I'll bite (big shock, right?).....
Or the sport could continue to invest in FPO until it is able to stand on its own two feet financially?
The WNBA is a good example of this sort of an effort - the WNBA's current rights deals lag behind the best comparable men's sports league - MLS, which is of similar age - at $25M vs $90M but the NBA's investment is beginning to pay off in terms of viewership that will lead to parity in rights deals as, looking at 2021 data, MLS averaged 384K viewers per regular season game with a 620K peak compared to the WNBA at 306K per regular season game with a 755K peak. This is happening as a result of the way the talent has finally begun to shift toward a more explosive, creative talent base as a result of the investment.
The FPO division, likewise, will take years of investment to get there. That's what happens, though, when you're fighting to overcome a full on century of investment-disparity between men's and women's athletics in general. There was a time, prior to the world realizing how lucrative professional sports could be, where women's athletics operated on a financial footing similar to men's athletics. For example: at one point women's soccer averaged over 25,000 live event attendees in the UK with peaks as high as 67,000 fans for an individual game.... and then, upon realizing that that money was being spent on women that could be spent on men and that the investment in sport could be lucrative, they were all banned from the facilities in the name of "what was good for them" (sports was seen as bad for women! good for men!). The peak women's game in the UK, women's super league, is 43,000 in modern times. Over 20K less than a century ago.
Women's sports are less popular not because women's sports inherently don't draw as much as men - they're less popular because we've crippled them with a century of relative lack of investment. I, for one, am all in favor of reversing course on this. Women's athletics at the start was just as capable of drawing as men, and it was put in its current position as a result of a full century if not much more of investment favoring the men. It didn't have to be this way, and it doesn't have to continue to be this way. Disc golf's women's division started off at a strong disadvantage as a result of society in general, and in my belief: we should be fighting to change that. We are but one platform for revolution, we can't change the world alone, but we can be one plank of many.
<3
I, and most people, am incredibly cynical that the WNBA or the NWSL will ever be able to stand on their own two feet financially and will need to be proven otherwise. They are important for other soft cultural and political reasons, but they're not money-making ventures. The exception being women's sports in Eastern Europe which as we've learned through the Brittany Griner situation play an important role in various money laundering operations.
It seems like you're saying that lucrative professional sports has come at the expense of women's sports. Which is exactly what I'm saying is likely to continue to happen in disc golf. I'm not arguing that would be ethical or fair. Just that carving off FPO is a likely choice to further financial profits, which is the goal of the DGPT.
I find this claim impossible to prove. You don't have any counter examples of times when women's sports have been given sufficient investment to show otherwise and I find the likelihood of that happening in our lifetimes to be pretty dismal.
I find it more likely that the DGPT will drop the women's side like every professional sports league beyond the UFC than that society at large changes to the extent that you seem to feel is a requisite for women's sports to be equally or even better viewed, played, and funded than man's sports. Even more so if the DGPT face's lawsuits for not including transwomen.
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Huh? I just provided the counter-example of the WNBA when placed next to a comparable men's sports league that was initiated at the same time. For entrenched sports leagues revenue primarily from eyeball-associated streams - regional and national network contracts, in-stadium advertising, etc.
I agree I haven't shown that the money flowing into the WNBA is on equal footing with MLS, but I'm sure you'll agree that the money is likely to follow the eyeballs. The WNBA is lagging behind financially because viewership has only started to make up ground. Since that initial post I found more numbers - the viewership is up to 379,000 per regular season game in 2022 with the draft up to 403,000 this summer. The eyeballs are showing up, there's no reason to assume that (as in all other advertising opportunities) the money won't follow.
Beyond that - I also provided an important note that women's soccer, at the point where investment was approximately equal at, well, just about nothing: the attendance numbers were much better for women's soccer than anything we have now.
I don't think lucrative professional sports have come at the expense of women's sports. I think that the demographic of lucrative professional sports has come at the expense of women's sports. I do not think there is any evidence that sports would not have become lucrative had we invested from the early 20th century in women's sports. Generations of women would have seen opportunities for financial advancement in sport. The demographics would simply be different.
WNBA is not currently profitable. It is subsided by the NBA. MLS has some profitable franchises but it's definitely still a dicey proposition. Perhaps the viewership numbers you're quoting will change that but I'm pessimistic. Especially if you look at the demographics of Gen Z sports viewership I think we are in for an across-the-board decrease in sports viewership which will be felt particularly hard by leagues like the MLS and WNBA.
One year does not make a trend, WNBA viewership has been on a decline for 20 years until 2022, and I suspect its increase viewership was in at least some way driven by the increased availability of sports gambling across the country. If you know you know, but there were some pretty, pretty good margins to be had in WNBA lines this year
I don't think you'll have the opportunity to see your expectation confirmed. I think we'll continue along the path that we've seen over time.
No young sports leagues are profitable. They're all and always have been subsidized by personal fortunes. This isn't unique to MLS and the WNBA.
Source your statement that WNBA viewership was on the decline for 20 years until 2022. I am seeing a lot of websites stating that the WNBA's numbers are at their highest since 2008, but I'm also seeing that those seem to be based on the Wikipedia article on the WNBA on ESPN which, strangely, doesn't agree, and posts numbers that make no sense at a glance.One year does not make a trend, WNBA viewership has been on a decline for 20 years until 2022, and I suspect its increase viewership was in at least some way driven by the increased availability of sports gambling across the country. If you know you know, but there were some pretty, pretty good margins to be had in WNBA lines this year
I'm using Statista: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1236723/wnba-regular-season-viewers/
Here's the wiki article which is... yeah:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WNBA_on_ESPN
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Should Rick get player of the year? 4 elite series plus the pro tour championship just about trumps a major right? Paul won Worlds and Waco and Gannon won USDGC and a Silver Series so you they may be in the running. Simon had a good year too but Ricky's was still better
tough call. Initially I think that yes, Ricky is POTY.
But, if you were told you could have either season as an option, winning a major (Worlds in particular) would certainly be hard to pass up for the season Ricky had.
Regardless, I think Ricky had the better overall season, by a slim margin.
