You seem to be missing the point entirely as well, I never said we need to drop the image entirely or avoid it all together.I don't believe that professionalism is the ticket to bigger pay, a larger audience and the sport being taken 'seriously'. I think youre missing the point of action sports; its entertainment. Its the consumer who is going to decide where the money goes and how much the riders will be paid, and I assure you that the viewers don't give two shits about how professional the riders are, in fact, it could even help the sport if it became well known that the World Champs after party was insane and that the doors are open. Remember, its potentially the most dangerous sport you can pick up so we want to be marketing ourselves to the risk takers, who are often pretty intense partiers as well. Complete waste of time trying to image yourself as something you're not
Take a look at any sport that is full of off the wall people, motoX is a great example, but you look at it now and all the riders display a high level of professionalism when it is needed, yet the weekend guys and the pros off season are very open to having fun and getting wild. A company will be careful to be associated with someone who is a wildcard and could hurt their reputation. For the sport to grow it needs and injection of money from somewhere, that will come from a sponsor who feels they can sell product through a rider, most products don't want a wild card. They want someone who is wild and professional but can control when and how they act and can be relied upon.
We can go two ways, we play up the crazy image which we have done in the past and it got us nowhere (palmer years), worked for a few years, it will develop an image of hooligans. This not only is a bad thing for trail development and public view on everyday riders but it equally tends to come with lower respect, most people who will see someone act like that will consider them immature and have little respect for what they do which leads to a difficult task promoting the sport and culture, it equally leads to the attitude of 'well if they dont take it serious how serious can it be" and we are back to a sport that is under recognized.
It would be great if I was wrong but I cant see it working that way.
The second way is as I said look at peaty, a guy who has fun, has a great image, has a pretty good wild man image but has a strong professionalism about him too. He is what we need from riders. There needs to be a striking balance. This not only gives credit to the sport but it maintains and improves our image and the seriousness of the sport but also the fun side, it does not give us a negative image but one that is positive. People will see serious riders which equates to a serious sport, something that needs to be taken serious deserves respect. All this leads to a positive light on riding and that is much easier to promote than a negative one. if we were marketing to 16-21 year olds the crazy image might work but we are pushing a culture and one that is widely recognized.
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