Pre Tournament Hype

One of the most significant things I think UK Ultimate is lacking is pre-tourney hype. Main stream sports have followers and people who have 'emotional investment' in their team of choice and so they feel it matters when their team succeeds or fails. Ultimate doesn't have people who care about results outside of the players themselves. This may be due to its short history or it may be due to it being boring to watch. At xEUCF however I watched games that were definately not boring and so I'm inclined to think that it's the short history. I'm a massive cynic when it comes to the spectator appeal of Ultimate at the moment, so was relieved when watching Clapham v Skogs to be genuinely entertained.

Ultimate as it is has very different values to main stream sports however (thankfully). Who cares if there are spectators or indeed people who care about results? Well, I think that Ultimate has the potential to retain SOTG as its core principal and still become a widespread sport able to spread positive attributes throughout communities. This would require effort in publicity and marketing while all the time being careful not to bring money into the equation. The down-fall of all main stream sports...(?)

On the flip side however, imagine an invite only tourney with prize money, say £5000 for the winning team. I'm pretty sure you would need active observers or the game wouldn't function, but then the Ultimate would be on another level.

Oh wait...
I would love to hear what the spirit was like at these tourneys.

Anyway, back to pre-tournament hype. On October 29th the UPA Club Championships 2009 will be taking place in Sarasota (North America) and ahead of this UltiVillage.com are putting together team previews of those that have qualified, at the moment there is one for Chain Lightning and one for Revolver. These are the sort of things that with additional growth, we should hope to see withing UK Ultimate. It's all just a matter of time.

Talent in editing and film production help too,