Good Press Release about Local Kiter / Wakeboarder

[TritonKiteboarding]

This is a press release in the right direction, courtesy of the normally anti-kiteboarding action sports network: Fuel TV. Follow the link at the end of the twitter post to view

RT @MatthewSexton @FUELTV Liquid Force Picks Up Aaron Abel: follow @aaronsabel , Congrats buddy http://ow.ly/Sqmq

[Kiteboarding Tampa Bay]

That's awesome! Aaron is a great choice for LF (or any company), as he rips both kite and wake and has an incredibly positive vibe about him. He's also been coaching adaptive wake/ ski programs for a long time over at Lake Seminole.
Congrats Aaron!

[al-kite-ah]

i agree with steve.....Aaron does have a very positive vibe about him. LF should be lucky to have them on their team. see you on the water...

[Whitey]

Any idea why Fuel TV is anti kiteboarding? Seems that it would fit in perfectly with everything I am seeing on their programing. I watch endless hours of guys doing nothing but jumping on snowboards.

[TritonKiteboarding]

because in comparison to the other sports on fuel, kiting is still a hobby. Fuel is wake, surf, snow, skate, bmx, you get the occasional footage from other sports but those are the sports that fund their network so those are the sports they showcase.

Kiting needs to have an established circuit of events (not course racing) that appeals to crowds and audiences, the pkra and the kpwt are great and truly make kiting a sport in Europe but in the U.S. the mainstream perspective is still misconstrued. I could go on for a while about this, its cool to see what will happen here in the next few years.

[Unimog Bob]

I am sure there are many reasons. I think one huge one is that the wind is not always cooperative, making the planning/filming of events difficult, whereas - (even if not optimal) - many other sports (like wake-boarding) can pretty much charge ahead any day they want, within reason and if necessary. You can't do that with kiting.
In addition, placement of a viewing audience around a small lake is pretty optimal, or around many other types of X-sports.
Kiting isn't nearly as easy for placement of an audience, and obviously weather-dependence is a huge hindrance. This makes a traveling circuit really hard. This is pretty obvious, I know, Matt.
Same goes for surfing.

The ultimate X-sport (for viewing/filming, imo) is indoor freestyle Moto.
Weather is no problem, seating is already there. Just bring in the dirt!
You can start at precisely 7pm, Friday night. That's pretty convenient.
(Americans hate inconvenience and rain-checks)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IP35r...eature=related

[Whitey]

Hobby vs. Sport is an interesting and fun one.

Darts? Golf? Bowling? Sailing? Chess? Archery? Trap Shooting? Poker?

Prior to being introduced to kiteboarding I was deep into a hobby. RC sail planes and RC electric 3d airplanes. When I started kiting I went from pretending to be flying to flying myself, much more fun.

I know the target market for skateboarding is huge vs. kiteboarding, I am sure that has a lot to do with things. But there can't be that many more people doing 400' jumps on snowboards than people doing kiteboarding big airs, or ripping waves with a kite. It's just cool to watch.

All of the surf events and snow events are condtion dependent, again I understand, a much bigger target market.

The audience issue is the same for surfing, or snowboarding, as it would be for our sport.

It seems the sponsers of the network are the advertisers that buy spots. They are the same folks sponsering the kiting events around the world. It would be cool to see our sport on TV, not even a competition just wave riding, big jumps, freestyle fun. Just like the snowboarders they are showing.

[Steve-O]

I love surfing and love watching surf films. The stories, the locations, the epic sessions, ect.

I do not really like to watch the surfing competitions however. It gets old quick in my opinion watching guys go down the same wave over and over, but the bottom line is sponsors got big dollars to spend and they don't mind spending it on air time with Fuel TV.

So my question is there are alot of great kiteboarding films that showcase the sport and not just competition.

How much does an hour slot cost on Fuel TV? I've seen some killer surf films on there through the years, and some really not so killer films that are getting air time. Someone is paying for it.

What companies would be willing to pay for airtime on the channel. I don't think Fuel would be against the idea of airing kiteboarding, but someone has got to pay for it. It's all about the advertising dollars.

We are like the incredible underground band that hasn't really been discovered yet.

[Whitey]

The programs are there to gather the audience, I don't think the programs pay to be there, actually they are paid to be there. Once the audience has been established by providing good programs that have good numbers of viewers watching all the time then the network sells advertising space durning the programs that is exposed to the audience the program pulled in. The superbowl doesn't pay to be played on TV they take bids to see who will pay them the most.

[Unimog Bob]

Interesting stuff. Yes, no one pays to be on TV to my knowledge, with exception of paid advertising gimmicks. It's pretty much the other way around with good shows drawing the advertising dollar. I think Steve is saying which companies would advertise on such shows.
As a side note, does surfing make mainstream TV much these days?

I can tell you this, poker ain't no sport. Neither is chess.
They are both mental games, not sports (imo). Darts is a sport though.
Interesting that Poker probably gets more airtime than surfing, kiting, snowboarding, etc. ... combined. All they do is turn over cards. Weird.