What's Wrong With Fencing Today
With the title alone, I am sure that a great number of sword wielding individuals are loosening up their flame fingers as you read this, so I'd better get to the point right away and capitalize on my second intention. For the last several years fencing clubs and the USFA as a whole has had a marvelous period of membership growth that lead to larger better competitions, better fencers, and a stronger international national program.
Recently clubs and the USFA have begun to notice a decline in the growth rate. In some clubs its turned into a run away shrink rate. I am going to tell you why. Some of you may have already figured it out. For some of you it will be a surprise, not because it is some deep dark secret, its simply because you have never thought of it from this angle.
It has nothing to do with the price of membership.
It has nothing to do with rules changes.
It has nothing to do with rating systems, sportsmanship, or the price of gear.
It has to do with the movies.
Compare a list of the membership numbers for the past ten years with a list of the top grossing movies of the last ten years. You will find a spike that coincides with Olympic years and you will see increases that coincide with the release of each installment of The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Pirates of the Caribbean, Star Wars. The unwitting secret of our recent successes has been adventure movies. Now that we have no movies with swords, we've lost the wind in our free publicity sails.
Now we have two choices, we can go out and get some swashbuckling movies made, which is possible with our diverse talent pool, or we can bite the bullet and actually market our sport at the level where people will see it. Clearly one of these is cheaper and easier than the other, but if you are the gambling sort you can surely see the appeal of the other. Plus, hey if nothing else we have more movies with swords to go see with our club mates.
