Why I've become a Hater

Amen Logan. Imagine if professional skiers were paid on a ratio that NFL players were paid on, street skiers would be making easy 6 figs and the big time competitors well you know, do we deserve it? hell yeah we do, we have ATLEAST as many torn knees in our industry as the NFL and more deaths in our sport. And like logan said Cam had to borrow money, which is bullshit, so many film skiers are scraping by.. but i guess the love for the sport and the desire to see how good of a segment you can put together is worth it. Good write up logan.
 
hate what you want, but your premise of "where's the money?" is wrong. How is our sport supposed to magically reach the greater public via the olympics before it happens lol. THe money comes from a larger audience becoming aware of our sport and buying into it. Money flow increases after more people start joining the sport... not 6 months before its audience grows to that of the olympics. but besides that you're obviously entitled to your opinion so I won't even comment, and anyhow I could care less how you feel about yourself and our sport
 
Here is my take on why ski videos themselves are not doing as well. And I swear to god, I am not trying to sound like a hater here.Snowboarding.

Now hear me out, Back when Miller films were hugely popular, snowboarding was very, very new still, and very few people were doing it. Back then if you were into snow sports, you were a skiier pretty much. Once snowboarding got popular, it divided the audience for things like major productions. No longer did the snowboarders want to watch an all ski video that featured little to no snowboarding, and the same went for skiiers. Skiiers are generally uninterested in watching snowboarding videos. You are speaking of all of these major video companies, you are leaving out the snowboarding ones. I cant personally think of any, but I am sure there are companies in the snowboarding sphere that are equivalent to Stept or Level 1.

To compound this problem, it seems to me like when snowboarding first hit the scene it sucked out alot of the more 'extreme' talent. If you asked pretty much anyone on a mountain from the late 90s to a few years ago (or possibly still) what the public at larg perceived [/b]as cooler, I am betting the large majority of answers would be snowboarding (again, I have no evidence other than personal experience on this, so I could be wrong). This still seems to be the case today. As a ski instructor, I teach alot of little kids, and adults. The age bracket from 13 to say, 20 for someone who has never skiied, or snowboarded, much more often starts snowboarding.

Also props to someone assuming NS is not all 13 year olds. I love these kind of discussions and think they are great. And like it or not, WE (the 20-30) crowd, are the future of skiing. We will be the ones running the major companies and resorts in the next 20 years, and it is up to us to fix this problem.

In my opinion, skiing is still very often viewed as much less cool than snowboarding. We need to get that opinion back on our side, or at least back to a neutral point. It doesn't help that, at least at my mountain, there are about 5 ski instructors who are under 30 (and only 2 who are into park), and about 50 who are over 30, where as the breakdown for the snowboard instructors is exactly the opposite. 3 instructors over 30 teaching snowboarding, and 40+ under 30 teaching it.

Sorry about the wall-o-txt

TL:DR version, Snowboarders did it
 
I know i have posted a lot in this thread but i am genuinely interested in this topic.

I 100% agree with what logan has said in the OP. Does anyone think that if all "pro" skiers were getting paid 6 figure pay checks we would be attracting the wrong type of people to the sport? As logan says in the OP, "Riley cant even afford a cup of coffee", I think this shows the raw passion he has for skiing and that he is really not skiing for anyone but himself.

However, if the stept crew were all getting paid 6 figs a year, would there not be a ton of wealthy people trying to get into urban and taking away the rawness that has been developed from pure passion?
 
Its hard to make money in the ski film industry. Feature films aren't really doing that well. Skiers in general are for the most part broke. We all embody the ski bum life. It is hard for me to purchase all the ski films that I would love to see. I don't have that kind of money lying around. I want to, but I also need gas in my car and shit. Its hard living these days, especially if you are a skier and need to keep buying ski equipment to keep your game up. We are now seeing more shorter films being available on iTunes such as The Wallisch Project, The Lost Season, and Let It Flow, which is where I am seeing the ski film industry going. Sure there will always be a major Level 1 and Poor Boyz flick, but all these mini series will begin to flourish.

I believe the Olympics will bring more publicity to the sport and maybe we can see more of an economic spurt for our industry. Not a guarantee though.
 
You realise that the snowboard community went through this whole argument from about 1996-2000? The Games changed the sport but it moved on.

Competitive freestyle skiing is changing rapidly but guess what? There's more to skiing than pro comps. There's nothing you can do to change what's happening so your choice is either to embrace it or to ignore it and do your own thing. Both are equally valid options. Bitching about it will get you nowhere.
 
so you hate that skiing is becoming a recognized sport in the olympics but at the same time you also hate that you/others aren't being paid like athletes? Comparing football/baseball salaries to skiing is also ridiculous.
 
Well you should start by convincing 67,000 people to come to your urban session, charge admission, and if they can't make it, then you get the money off of the $20 billion tv contract. Skill and risk levels can't be interpolated into paychecks across different sports. Yeah, some of that seemed a little tounge-in-cheek but it was just so far off.
 
Some people don't do it for the money, yes money would be nice and yes people definitely deserve it because they market a company better than anyone else could by getting kids stoked. But we are all here for the same reason, our passion for skiing. Personally I could care less if I ever get payed to produce what I do. Yes it would be helpful but I do it so that even if one out of 3000 of my views reaches out to a kid and gets him stoked to ski and have fun it means the world to me. If the Olympics happen to bring more money into the sport that will be awesome. And many athletes are at the top of my list to be the first ones to reap the benefits but if not than still..... Does it matter. We are all going to ski anyway. Money shouldn't buy happiness.
 
Film companies like stept, php, level 1, etc are broke because their customers are us... the group of skiers that are comparably more "core". Their main target demographic is poor fuck and/or stingy as fuck so yeah its hard to make money. Competition skiers get paid more because they appeal to the more mainstream skiing population - the population that actually has money, and sponsors know that. That IMO is why the huge disparity, competition skiers increase profits for companies more than film skiers. That being said the olympics will without a doubt bring more money into the sport, some of which will inevitably make it to film skiers as well... So blaming the olympics for the disparity in income or thinking its fucking over the "core" pros is pretty misguided (again IMO).

On the other front, although competition skiing has become so uncreative and against what free skiing used to stand for, it (like said before) will get more kids to get onto skis and into the parks or wherever and that is a good thing. The existence of groups like inspired, stept, LaFa, etc... proves that there is still a contingency in free skiing that is more pure to the roots and they will have the ability to influence all the new kids strapping skis on, even if those kids joined because they saw some stock dub 10 mute in the olympics.
 
Y'know, all you people complaining about shit being deleted... This may blow your mind but when NS churns up a worthwhile topic the whole ski world sees it. He's actually doing you a favor by cleaning up after you, and removing the bullshit that makes people think this forum is populated by breastfeeding mongoloid 13yo's does us all a favor.

I know you're pissed about your "freedoms" and shit, but save it for something that matters. Not being allowed to be a vapid douche like you may want to should not be on that list of concerns. Please let it go so we can actually focus on the issue rather than just piss back and forth for the sake of spinoff arguing about our rights as douchebags, ok?
 
As mentioned by other people, we can't expect the standard ski movie to be able to rent out huge theaters and fill them with the current format.

Warren Miller Movies back then had a storyline, followed people on adventures and shit. Warren Miller movies today still do that, but they are incredibly unrelatable.

Most other ski movies today are more relatable, but don't tell a story. We are starting to move away from that with stuff like Stept, Sweetgrass, etc.

The perfect balance is somewhere in between. I've mentioned this before but Travelling Circus does this really well, keeping it relatable to regular skiers who cant afford a BC trip to Alaska or Asia, and telling an interesting story at the same time.

 
Logan i have a new found respect for you for posting this. (not that i didn't respect you before)

As a kid i grew up ski racing thinking my goal was to one day be an Olympian. up until I was 16 I had the goal of going to vancouver 2010

I still made it. at the age of 19. But as a ski bum just there to shred. and I was so thankful to not be part of what I thought was the meaning of our sport.

So thanks for the good read, and it backs up how i have felt since i stopped racing.
 
I'm just referencing the part about start ups making it in this industry. Entering any industry as a start up is far from easy and will take a long time to establish amongst the heavy hitters. I think our particular market, being a niche that it is, has the heavy hitters that have been there from the beginning, and quite frankly, aren't going anywhere. Level 1 Prod and PBP come to for me. MSP too I suppose. I have been out of the scene the last couple of seasons, but it does take more than skills to get into that sort of market and sell the amount of product to sustain the kind of wealth you are speaking of.

I have been a fan of stept for a long while, but I don't think they will be able to attact the share of the market you are elluding to, and that isn't their fault. I am sure they work as hard if not harder than the big boys, but the big boys were there first, and Stept would have to find a way to get their slice of the pie. It may take some innovation, because DVD sales prob won't get it done.
 
You are thinking to small. all action sports seem to be going the way of the dodo. except scootering, but fuck scootering. action sport my ass.
 
A - Fucking - Men. We need to stop money from taking control of our sport, it's fucking nonsense.
 
it's no different than a bball player making it to the NBA... at some point you have to realize that the skills aren't quite up to par and move on from it. The olympics are fucking amazing and the best humans on the planet compete amongst one another.... why hate on that? sorry some things might not go everyone's way but wether you like it or not the olympics not only provide exposure for skiing but allows the best pros on the planet to compete and push eachother. (da truth)

you can turn salty and hate on this and that, but it's not getting you anywhere.. sorry for being brutally honest... just ski for fun
 
i feel like its tough for freeskiing specific companies to put up much money for their athletes. Think about a smaller company like saga or surface or something. Just speculating here but probably not a whole lot of disposable income to subsidize a sick international film trip for every one of their athletes, as much as they would LOVE to.

I think one way in which the olympics WILL be positive is in getting larger, non-skiing specific corporations more interested in sponsoring freeskiers. I haven't seen the Tucker Perkins hair commercial but I feel like if random 'main stream' companies start seeing skiing as a profitable advertising medium, they'll throw cash at their athletes or their athletes film companies for anything they want to do. I feel like many film/competition crossover guys like Tom would much rather put that money into trips or something.

One of my friends was behind the camera a lot last season with Stept filming for Mutiny, and I was actually just asking him about some of this stuff yesterday. He was telling me how travel budgets were annoying and often not very accessible for a last minute trip after a storm and so on. However, he was also telling me about Sean Jordan's rockstar contract which (if i remember correctly) is basically a flat salary and then a bonus for every second of footage hes repping rockstar. That is a model that works for almost ANY COMPANY, energy drinks, soda, clothes, hair products, etc. I think the olympics are gonna get big main stream corporations looking at skiing, and while some people will think of it as selling out, its only gonna boost athletes and filmers abilities to kill it. Even NIKE has started making a foray into the sport, and I think thats gonna become more common with main stream corporations.

Although I completely agree with Logan that the status quo for how athletes get paid is completely unacceptable. FILM SEGMENTS ARE THE MAIN REASON ANY OF THAT SHIT GETS BOUGHT TO BEGIN WITH!!
 
dis gon b gud.

Let's get back on topic, shall we? Skiing is an expensive sport in general, and realizing that it is not like football, we are getting the name of the sport out there by the Olympics. I honestly think this helps get the sport out there and let sponsors open their eyes to what freeskiing is instead of it being aerials, and I agree with what you said, OP, that most skiers aren't getting paid enough. Take the Hood Crew Q&A for example, they end up spending their off season working so that they can survive during the winter.
 
On one hand I know that the sick big mountain and international urban shots are only possible with all the advertising money in the sport but on the other hand I hate watching ski movies where it feels like I'm seeing a bunch of human billboards on skis
 
So much orange in this thread, I feel like I'm at a Bronco's game.

Congrats to Logan for exposing a nerve. Obviously there are some things that should be discussed.

The Olympics aren't going to hurt freeskiing, but I don't know that it will help it that much either. FIS is another matter entirely. FIS wants every comp to be sanctioned. That's not good.

Ultimately, some people are going to be more into competition and others are going to be more into filming. Nothing wrong with either.

Logan's original post was a rant about why there isn't more money in the sport. I think that it's great that athletes can actually make money in the sport of freeskiing. It wasn't always that way. Others have pointed out that it was pretty rare for guys to actually get paid for ski parts before the 90's. For most of us, the goal was to obtain immortality, by finding your way into some ski footage that would end up being seen somewhere. You could not make a living as a professional skier period. Warren Miller would find these local guys who ripped, but they were always like Joe Scrotum, a welder from Ketchum, Idaho, and his friend Bob Nuts, who installs lift towers.

On the one hand I think that we should be stoked that guys are getting paid to ski. On the other hand, there is nothing wrong with wanting more. The trick is to make it more marketable and bring in more money in the direction of what pros are doing. I'm personally hoping that this thread creates some flashes of brilliance.
 
This.

Plenty of big-named athletes have went off and done their own thing that is positive for our sport and image of the industry. I.E. JP Auclair and Alpine Initiatives, Benchetler/Pollard/Pep staying to their roots and doing their Nimbus thing with movies and webisodes, people like Kye Petersen who go off and dedicate their life to being out of the spotlight and charging rowdy mountaineering lines.

Quit bitching, more doing.

Maybe start shredding big mountain a little more, Logan? From what I can hear you can ski big mountain just as good as you can ski urban…Might loosen a little tension and get you off NS a little more.
 
I dont understand your point of why certain skiers "deserve" more money. Granted what they do is incredible, but they deserve what some company is willing to pay them. What benefit do sponsors have of paying for people to hit urbans at 2 in the morning, when the crew purposefully chooses a time and place to be far away from spectators? Skiing is not a great live spectator sport, so no spectators means no exposure, means no $ for athletes
 
First, thank you to the people who are contributing legitimate arguments for every side of this discussion. I haven't been so intrigued by a thread in a long time.

Next, I see what you are saying about the skiing-snowboarding dilemma. Indeed, there were times (back in the day) when I still entered the park regularly and would join in on hating snowboarding (well, no one likes being told their sport is wussy when you KNOW it isn't, right?!). I, however, think that it is more a matter of how to work together on promoting both sports than how to raise the 'cool factor' of skiing. There have been many movies in the last few years that have featured both skiers and snowboarders and I get stoked on the achievements of both. Let's figure out a way to pool the resources. Promote the things you get FROM the sport, rather than the sport itself. Is it the feeling of freedom? Of the momentary feeling of weightlessness when you hit that pocket of waist deep pow? Is it the way you can just spend time with people on the slopes and not care about small talk or the mundane aspects of everyday life? Is it coming up with a wicked new trick? Getting recognition for something you have worked hard at? All of these things can be applied to both skiing and boarding. These are the things that can be used to rope in new blood. I think the OP may have been getting at this in his mention of WM's films and how they highlighted the lifestyle -the rises and falls and humanity- of the sport, rather than a checklist of achievements.

I don't know where I'm going with this anymore actually.

You don't have to lose the "free" aspect of a sport - training for competition is not for everyone. Filming is not for everyone. But there have to be some people who generate the money, and some people to receive it. Is it really a free sport if people feel the pressure to be amazing at it? What's wrong with being a terrible park skier if you love doing it anyway?

I'm sorry for my post not really having a purpose, I'm really tired and I've been sitting in my office all day without windows.
 
I agree with most of what was said, and I especially agree with this point. What I really don't like is people spouting off about what one thing or another is doing to "our sport". In a lot of ways I don't really like the direction skiing is going in right now and there are undoubtedly plenty of others that are bummed out for similar reasons, but guess what? It's not our sport.

There are people out there - skiers - that see exactly what is going on, and don't have a major issue with it. Maybe they get stoked on the competition scene, or money, or all kinds of patriotic nonsense about the Olympics. I'd like to reiterate that I totally disagree with these people, but I can't justify shutting them out of the conversation and saying that I and people like me know what is best for skiing. Different people are stoked on skiing for different reasons and that is never going to change. The corruption and generally shitty dealings of competition skiing's governing bodies is another issue.
 
i get so pissed off at all this complaining. It's a choice everyone makes. Its just like skateboarding, bmx, mountain biking whatever the money isnt going to be in the film segments no matter how sick they are. And if you dont like the Olympics well maybe we shouldnt have the X games either.

The sport is going through a change. Warren Miller was so successful because the freestyle was something new and exciting. The Olympics are that new and exciting thing. The sport is going to stay the same if there isn't some kind of change. And unless you have some brilliant plan i think the Olympics is one way for the sport to grow.

 
you are so right. this summer i rediscovered how much i love skateboarding and really starting to get into the urban scene in snowboarding and it has reminded me why i love skiing, because breck and keystone have turned into a training ground and it makes me resent what skiing has become.

thanks for posting this, also lets probably get married.
 
I'm not sure I have an answer or solutions to the grand questions presented here, but I do know one thing for sure...

It is fucking bullshit that run of the mill female competition skiers are getting paid head to toe while traveling the world on solid travel budgets while someone like Karl Fostvedt is sitting in debt after a season like he had. He put out more footage than anyone else in the game (16 minutes between 4bi9 and PBP), and had in my mind the best performance of the year. Top that off with 8 photos and ads already run this fall, and I can come up with no other conclusion than the vast majority of this industries is back-asswards with little hope of finding the light in the near future. /rant

 
I feel it. I think the reason is because mass market TV sanitizes the culture. One of the reasons I love skiing is because of all the personalities I meet. We say weird shit, make shit up, swear, drink, smoke, etc., and do it because we honestly love it and it's who we are. But that can't show through on TV because society at large does not approve. But people relate better to the stories told in movies, because they feel more real. Skiers on TV are like NFL players on TV: not relatable.

I do think things will improve, since society seems to be shifting away from the war on drugs and shit like that, and more into accepting lifestyles like those we lead. Action sports seem to be getting more popular. Once we're out of the recession, and this generation really starts taking hold, we'll see the resurgence. Until then, keep killing it and spreading the real mentality of skiing.
 
No, believe it or not he is doing a lot too help the situation by calling attention to it.

This is probably the first time someone has brought up the fact that while the Olympics are bringing money too the sport, we need to make sure that money keeps on going into the sport and were not squandering it on something silly, like what happenned with moguls.

There are pretty much no open Mogul comps left because after 1992 for whatever reason it was decided that mogul comps needed perfect courses that cost a shitload to maintain and in all honestly are no fun too ski or watch, all so people could go fast and do 5 twisters.
 
The reality is that the money really isn't there in skiing in any area at all except major global companies (Salomon, Atomic etc.,) and the most major resorts (Whistler (although look at Intrawest's financial struggles in the last few years) Vail Resorts etc.,). Companies like Salomon have to work on a global market and dabble in a variety of sports beyond skiing in order to succeed financially and develop that more global identity required to maintain that wealth. And many resorts operate on very tight limits as well; with lift tickets covering the bare minimums of operating costs they must count primarily on real estate or food and beverage to make a profit. And the money in skiing is generally in the "recreation" sector. Both racing and freeskiing suffer from the financial problems of being in niche markets within a sport. Sure the top players may make a lot of money within those designations, but the majority must subsist on a separate income or, if their discipline is in the Olympics, government funds. The money in skiing is still in the "recreation" market, your weekenders over 30 with some disposable income, not die-hard freeskiing or racing. There's definitely a financial shift towards "freeskiing" but its towards your backcountry touring market or this "all-terrain rocker segment" (think of all the joe-schmoes on S7s for instance). The money influx will sort of stop there, these people aren't going to be buying the latest film to come out, except for maybe Sherpa's because its getting advertised in GQ as a must own for any avid extreme sports enthusiast sartorial type bullshit.

Skiing as a whole is a niche sport. It's only financially successful if you live in an area with snow and sufficient vertical relief. It's also a rich sport, primarily reserved for the middle-class and up and even then it can be quite costly enough to deter families and individuals investing in it as "their sport" So you've basically got a sport that's popular enough to make money in Canada, USA, Norther and Western Europe and the right spots in Australia/New Zealand, and South America. The global population that can afford to ski and that live in a place where skiing is possible is pretty damn small. Whereas you can take skateboarding for example. It is a very niche sport, with a lot of parallels to modern freeskiing. But its cheaper and you can do it anywhere you've got a surface. Hence, it can make a damn lot more money as a sport which allows core skate companies to survive (although Nike and Adidas etc., are presenting a challenge) and pay athletes enough money to subsist on.

Modern freeskiing is still so young it hasn't had time to develop into an industry where there's going to be a lot of money made. Hell snowboarding just had its boom in the last 15-20 years so we are just emerging from the shadow of that industry.

As for the Olympics, honestly, I don't know why people wanted it so bad anyways, other than that it would be a way for some people to get legitimately rich. Otherwise though what is the appeal? Why do we want to showcase to the world what freeskiing is and grow the sport in that way? Do people really feel that the sport needs recognition from major networks and sporting groups? Skiing is a hell of a lot cooler as this fucked up weird thing that only a select few do, than this brand name, marketable, broadcast hungry monster that's starting to form.

Wasn't skiing way cooler when no one was doing it anyways?
 
Numerous times in this article people have said that branded sponsors should be funding these production companies to help support the athletes and give them more exposure. Well, why don't the people that currently appreciate these films fund them in the beginning to get the ball rolling? By the public funding them, they would be able to afford the advertising that is needed to broadcast their films outside of the ski community, therefore generating more money to support their athletes and their travel costs to film. I just think all they need is a little backing in the beginning, by the public instead of brand sponsors, to help them branch out to the general public.
 
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